Delicate Equipment
by MichaelCygnus
Summary: The Covenant are coming, and Humans are running out of places to hide. When cornered, the only option left is to fight even harder. A small team of Spartan-III supersoldiers are there to provide the muscle. Rated T for general gory mayhem, featuring all-original characters.
1. Chapter 1

_Maenali III_

_Maenali System_

_January 5, 2552, 0947 Hours, Standard Military Calendar_

Spartan-III G-018 padded carefully along the side of the ridge, careful not to skyline herself, and relied on the trees to cover her movements. Her breath, deep and even, kept her heart rate down, and she smiled with the exertion of hiking through the thin mountain air with the heavy weight of her armor and the long, deadly SRS-99 rifle cradled in her arms. The weapon was incredibly deadly, sending 14.5mm rounds flying downrange at well over the speed of sound. It was rated as an anti-materiel rifle; particularly effective against delicate equipment- such as brains.

To that purpose, G-018 carefully slipped down onto the soft, loamy soil of Maenali III and activated an icon in her HUD. It was a charming little figure, a half-dome little creature with a ragged edge at its bottom and two beady little eyes; SCPO Mendez had once said it came from something called 'PacMan'. Either way, it suited her, and thinking of the tough old top soldier back on Onyx helped her feel better. Outside her helmet, the sensitive photo-reactive skin of her Semi-Powered Infiltration armor shimmered slightly, altering from a slightly pearlescent deep green to a near-perfect image of the ground beneath her. Only her rifle remained un-cloaked, and swaddled as it was with carefully constructed burlap, it quickly became nothing more than a small log lying on the ground as she pushed up the ridgeline, carefully choosing her slot so as to remain perfectly hidden. Her SPI armor made her invisible, but an errant flash of plasma light would still short it out, and heat would quickly become a concern. She had only about thirty minutes to make this shot count.

The UNSC was doing a hell of a job holding onto this system, just a small Inner Colony not too far from Reach, and although it probably would have been smarter to just turn and run, the truth was that there were getting to be fewer and fewer places to run to. She felt anger boil up in her, narrowing her thoughts and threatening to spike her heart rate. The damnable Covenant had found her little homeworld nine years ago, and proceeded to incinerate it from orbit, just because they didn't want to bother with the effort of a ground-assault. UNSC Marines had saved her life that night, and had died in the burning plasma to get her on-board a transport headed out and away.

Spartan-III G-018, Charlotte, smiled grimly as her anger coalesced down to the icy spike of focus she had learned to hone. The alien bastards had tried to get her, but they hadn't been _quite_ fast enough. She was sure they'd been quite pleased with themselves as they burned women and children alive, enjoying scorching the so-called 'Human vermin' from their ships. But they had not foreseen the depth of strength contained even inside a six-year old girl, the depth of strength in the Human race. It had taken nine years, but Charlotte had grown up, become six feet tall, superbly muscled and intensely motivated. Her thick red hair was cut short now, exactly regulation length, but her crystal-green eyes burned now with determination and drive.

Charlotte had grown up to be a hero, a hunter… a Spartan. And now, on a small, beautiful forest-world so unlike her own home so long ago, she was in place, ready, willing, and able to do the deadly work so few Humans could. Snugged up to her SRS, on this ridgeline outside Graev City, she was about to buy her brother-soldiers of the UNSC Army regiment on this world a little time.

Along the small dirt track that linked Graev with the small plains that served as the Covenant's main service field, a row of armored vehicles floated along, escorting transports that carried the assault force detailed to kill everyone in the city. ONI didn't know exactly why or how the Covenant had found Maenali or what they wanted badly enough to waste time with a ground assault, but that didn't matter to Charlotte. All she had to do was spot the golden-armored Elite in charge of this little circus and take her shot. _One free lobotomy, courtesy of the United Nations Space Command_, she thought sarcastically.

The vehicles drew level with Charlotte, and sure enough, standing tall and guiding his forces, was the gold-armored Elite. Charlotte carefully scanned the convoy, noting the location and number of the Covenant Banshee fliers and the scuttling, beetle-like forms of Ghosts. The Elite saved the most impressive machine for himself, however; at thirty seven meters in height and fifty meters in length, the Type 47 'Scarab' was one of the most frightening machines in the Covenant arsenal… and an unadvertised surprise.

_Still,_ Charlotte thought to herself, zooming in on the Elite's helmet. _Makes for a damn good target, altogether._ She carefully zeroed her scope, and ever so gently exhaled half her breath. Her muscles slowly contracted, smoothly squeezing the trigger. In between heartbeats, with her body the most perfectly still firing platform she could make it, the SRS fired once, its deadly projectile flying at the Elite.

The round fired far faster than the sound it created, so the Elites surrounding their golden leader had no warning that Death had come calling than the abrupt jerk of his head and the spray of blue-purple blood from the 14.5mm hole that had suddenly appeared. They scrambled, roaring in anger and surprise, searching for the sniper, but for them it was already far too late.

Soaring above the combatants, in close orbit, the UNSC _Light Fighter_ kept careful surveillance on the mission. A small beep from the communications console drew Lieutenant Commander Paul Walker's attention. His Operations officer, Lieutenant (j.g.) Emma David, glanced up at him. "Telemetry incoming, sir, and a request for a fire mission."

Walker smiled slowly. He recognized the coded tag on the transmission; G-018 was a prime asset, not much given to making requests except for truly valuable targets. Besides… if the stars were with them today... "Sensors, where are the Covenant ships?" The Covies had brought along a Heavy Corvette and a light destroyer, plenty enough juice to turn Maenali III into radioactive glass from orbit, but they seemed to be making a particularly disciplined scan of the planet rather than blasting it. Odd, but seeing as how it was keeping the ten thousand soldiers on the ground alive, Walker wasn't of a mind to argue. A battle group under the inimitable Admiral Keaton was on its way, so the Covenant were living on borrowed time. It was just a matter of collecting on the interest, he thought ruefully.

Sensor Chief Orleans glanced up. "Just over the limb of the planet sir; they would never detect a missile launch from us."

Soft smile becoming a predatory grin, Walker nodded to his weapons officer. "Well, then, Weaps, why don't we go ahead and give the Covenant a little token of our affection?"

Charlotte held the laser designator steady, almost completely ignoring the activities of the Covenant around her. They were doing a search, all right, but it was frenetic, unorganized, and sloppy. They were dismayed by the sudden loss of their commander of course, and from the beatdown between two red-armored veterans a fair amount of on-the-spot politicking was going on, but even still. Warriors shouldn't lose their heads quite like this; it meant the enemy could get away, if they had any sense, or in Charlotte's case, could call in a hell of a big airstrike on you.

She checked her designator, noting the little blinking green light and the wide red circle painted on the ground by her HUD. Right on target, right on time; trust the Navy to get their licks in. They had so few pleasures in life, after all.

With a screaming roar, the eighty foot long missile came from the clouds, momentarily disrupting the Covenant search. They stared in surprised terror for a long moment, and Charlotte grinned to herself and took a photo with the helmet camera; at least a thousand Covenant troops, the Scarab, dozens of Wraith tanks, Banshees, Ghosts, all scrambling to avoid the blazing dart of the missile. Burying her head in her arms and sliding a few meters back from the ridge; Charlotte tucked herself away inside her armor, killed the camouflage, and clenched her teeth.

On the other side of the ridge, _Grendel_ air-to-ground missile smashed into the Scarab. Flesh was stripped from bone by the shattering impact, and the Scarab was effectively turned into a massive fragmentation grenade that obliterated hundreds of enemy troops and certainly gave away their position to the Army outposts fifty kilometers distant. With communications scrambled, Charlotte no longer had to worry about the Covenant getting the drop on _anyone_ anymore. Once the ground quit heaving and the last of the shrapnelcrashed back to Maenali, Charlotte slowly crept back up to the ridge with a feral grin. She quickly snapped a few photos, and added them to the growing collection of 'before and after' shots in her helmet's drive. _Nothing like a hard day's work to satisfy,_ she thought.

Now it was time to hoof it back to her extraction point and hitch a ride with a Falcon. She was certain that Colonel James would have more targets that needed free lobotomies, and if she was particularly good, maybe she could score a Fury Tac-Nuke. That would make for a _real_ pretty before and after, to be sure.

_Camp Pachall_

_Maenali III, Maenali System,_

_January 5, 2552, 1249 Hours, Standard Military Calendar_

The UH-144 Falcon settled with nary a wobble onto the packed dirt pad in the Army camp's perimeter, and its powerful turbines whined as it lifted back into the sky. What with a major Covenant incursion on the world, those poor Falcon jocks were being kept plenty busy, for sure. She turned, her armor scored, battered, and charred in a few places, and headed for the command trailer. As soon as she checked in, she'd clean her weapons and gear, grab a bite and a shower, and maybe even an hour or two of sleep before she headed back out again.

Several of the UNSC Army troopers glanced her way, and Charlotte made a point to give each of them a nod- they were brother soldiers, even if she did scare them; besides, she was a SPARTAN-III- they had a right to be scared. Not that she would ever deliberately put them in harm's way, but even in her few short weeks off Onyx, she knew that trouble seemed to follow Spartans wherever they went, and those men and women didn't have anything like the augmentations or gear she did. A Warthog growled in, skidding around the corner, probably a courier or a scout returning, and Charlotte moved on- all was as it should be.

The command trailer itself was just a simple steel box on treads, containing at the moment radios, computers, and Third Battalion, Seventh Regiment, Second Infantry's command staff. It was the nerve center of Camp Pachall, and Charlotte paused a moment to doff her helmet and run a gauntleted hand over her tightly braided dark burgundy hair. Sure she presented a properly Navy appearance; Charlotte walked up the short stairs and entered the command trailer.

Gathered around a map table were the Colonel, two Captains, and, to Charlotte's surprise, two huge figures in MJOLNIR armor- Spartans! Keeping a tight grip on herself, Charlotte came to attention. "Sir! Spartan G-018 returning from assignment!"

The Colonel glanced up and nodded to Charlotte. He looked tired, his face lined and creased with worry. "Thanks for your spectacular heads-up, Spartan. I have a new assignment for you; ONI has decided to form a new fast-reaction team, and has sent these two Spartans to be your team-mates." He strode around the map table and extended it; Charlotte took it and gave it a careful shake. "Good luck to you, Charlotte. Thanks for all your help."

Charlotte smiled faintly. "Thank you, Colonel. I'm glad I could be of service."

The two other Spartans nodded approvingly, if infinitesimally. Reading body language was important to someone who wore concealing armor and an opaque visor for most of their lives; a survival skill that would allow you to tell what your team was thinking even when the faintest sound could be deadly, and it was obvious they liked what they saw in Charlotte. They stepped around the table opposite the Colonel, and the leading Spartan, a more slender specimen in blue and gold armor with the unique CQB armor helmet, gestured outside.

The three Spartans walked in silence for a little while, the leading Spartan in blue and gold and the bigger partner in deep, deep midnight blue Mark V armor. Charlotte kept her mouth shut, slipping her helmet back on and setting her suit COM to an open setting- just in case her team mates were feeling verbose. After a few minutes, a welcome green light clicked on, indicating radio traffic. "So, you're a Gamma, eh?"

The voice was strong and even, somewhat surprisingly a female's voice. The blue and gold armor worn by the slender warrior to her right masked gender much more effectively than Charlotte's SPI-II armor, apparently. "Yes, ma'am. G-018, Charlotte. I finished training at Onyx three weeks ago, and I've been here on Maenali a week."

A soft chuckle echoed over the COM, this time a male's voice. "B-170 Matthew, here. The lady on point is B-106, Logan, and the leader of our little band of ruffians. We've both been out in the Stars for a while."

"Indeed we have, Matthew." Logan's head cocked over and scanned Charlotte's battered armor. "You particularly attached to that rig, Petty Officer?"

"No, Ma'am," Charlotte responded instantly. It was a lie, of course; Spartans lived and died by their armor, but even her limited experience had taught her that if a superior officer in your team asked that question while wearing superior gear, it was a wise choice to shut your mouth and see what they had in mind.

"Good. Matthew has a few goodies for you. We have a mission, and it's going to require a fair amount more protection than SPI gear can offer. Here," Logan gestured towards a small trailer marked with _do not enter_ decals. "You and Matthew get in there and get fitted. I'm going to go for a quick turn around the campus, make sure you're not interrupted, and do some consulting. I'll be back in twenty for a briefing."

Matthew nodded gravely, the up-armor on his Mark V helmet lending him a predatory air. "We'll be ready, Commander." He nudged Charlotte. "Come on. I want to see what this rig looks like." His voice held a strange note of glee. "You wouldn't _believe_ how much it costs."

Charlotte couldn't help but smile as she followed the big Spartan into the trailer. Taking up much of the free space inside was a multi-armed contraption that clicked and whirred. "Step right up, one-eight. It won't bite you." Nodding, Charlotte stepped up next to it, placing her feet in the small white square at its base. Matthew walked up next to it, pulled off his helmet, and set it down on top of the computer console in front of him. Charlotte glanced over at him, taking in the details. He wore his blond hair short against a scarred skull, dark brown skin taut and showing only the beginnings of crow's feet at the corners of dark blue eyes. He had a strong jaw, high cheekbones, and his mouth was pulled into a small smile. "Hold on. This is where the magic happens."

Charlotte took a deep breath and faced front. The machine spread its arms around her, unlocking and removing her battered SPI armor and rapidly stacking it inside an open case behind the armature. A second case was opened, and over her standard-issue ballistic gel suit the armatures began to lock the much heavier, far more resistant MJOLNIR Mark V powered armor. Legs, torso, arms, all were soon encased under layers of powerful pseudo-muscles and incredibly tough ferro-ceramic composite. Matthew turned slightly as the gauntlets sealed over Charlotte's hands and held out a helmet, all angular lines and golden faceplate. She grinned brightly at Matthew, who returned the gesture. "I can't believe I'm wearing Commando armor," Charlotte felt her pulse pound as she slipped the heavy helmet over her head. "All systems check, Lieutenant. I'm ready for shield start-up."

Matthew's fingers danced, and with a feeling unsettlingly like ants dancing over her skin, Charlotte's shield's came to life. "All right, shipmate. You're all set. You want to keep the long rifle?"

Charlotte stepped across the room and hefted her SRS up. "Oh, yes, Lieutenant. Very much so."


	2. Chapter 2

_Falcon Echo One Zero Niner_

_Downtown Seung,_

_Maenali III, Maenali System,_

_January 7, 2552, 1839 Hours, Standard Military Calendar_

The Falcon roared along, weaving through the roof tops of downtown Seung. Fires burned in the outskirts, causing severe updrafts that the Falcon jockeys had to dodge, and Charlotte shook her head sadly. Her mission two days ago had blunted the Covenant thrust, sure enough, but only for a matter of hours. The Covenant destroyer in orbit had blasted down with its plasma cannons in retribution, soaking up all the damage the UNSC gunners could dish out, and successfully knocked out the ground-based MAC.

That was the deathblow. Without the Magnetic Accelerator Cannon, the Covenant would press in and incinerate the city as soon as they repaired the damage to their destroyer. The Engineers were working as fast as they could, but odds were that the cannon wouldn't be repaired in time. A whole lot of people were going to die, and die badly, if the cannon facility wasn't held against the Covenant force charging up into the city.

The Army was fighting tooth and claw for every inch, employing every dirty trick in the book and making more up as they went along, buying time with their lives for the Engineers welding and bodging their hearts out. From what Charlotte could see from the Falcon, they needed Spartans.

Logan opened the COM, ready to deliver her usual pre-mission briefing. "Okay, here it is. An advance team of Covenant armor and Elites have penetrated the Army barricade, using the sewers to make an end run. They're trying to get in close to the facility so they can knock out the missile batteries and control facilities that get the MAC its targeting data and actuate the gimble. Echo is being inserted to help the small Army garrison blunt this little adventure, and if possible, keep the gun intact enough for us to use it, if and when.

"The Covenant destroyer, named _Sanguine Vision,_ took some serious damage in their first tangle with Seung, but Colonel James figures that it'll be back in fighting trim in a few hours. The Engineers want to work on the MAC for every second they've got, and that means we have to make so much noise the _Vision_ looks for _us_ first, not the gun."

Matt snorted a laugh through the COM. "That seems like a _lovely_ way to pass afternoon, Commander." Charlotte smiled briefly, glancing over at the blue-armored Spartan. He was a strange one, tough and nasty in a fight, and he had a habit for making a well-turned phrase at the right time. "Because attracting the attention of a Covenant destroyer is a grand way to last long enough to enjoy our pensions."

"What are you complaining about, Matt? You've got a brand new cannon to play with." Logan's voice was warm with humor. "Now shut up. Once we reach the facility, I'll move down to the ground level and turn the crank on the Covie infantry. Matt, you'll take the first level with that M6 of yours, and Charlotte, you take top cover and issue as many lobotomies as you can, understood?"

Charlotte flashed her confirmation light, eyes locked out into the city sliding by. The Falcon popped up and over a last line of concrete towers, and with a fast swoop that made her stomach roil, the MAC facility was there. It was a simple structure, large oval concrete pads for heavy transports, a central mushroom of cement and glass ringed by missile batteries and shielding an armored bunker; that bunker was even now filled with UNSC Army Engineers, desperately welding the MAC's housing gimble and energy relays back together again.

The Falcon flared in, ducking a streamer of plasma from a Wraith tank on the far side of the security perimeter. A Covenant _Spirit _class dropship was ducking in under the hailstorm of fire the Army platoon was cranking out. The radio crackled, and a harried voice echoed in Charlotte's ears. "Echo team? Lieutenant Morgan here. The Covenant are dropping an attack group of Brutes on my position. We can hold them, but it's taking everything I've got to get it done. There's a force of maybe forty Covenant, mixed Elites, Jackals, and Grunts, supported by four Wraiths coming up from the south. You'll have to be the ones to issue the party favors and escort our guests from the premises."

Charlotte jumped from the Falcon as soon as the machine was low enough to avoid hurting herself. Logan and Matt landed on either flank, ready for action. Logan unlimbered her assault rifle and pointed towards the MAC building. "Time to go to work, Echo! To your posts!"

Charlotte felt a strange quiver pass through her, and she took off, her SRS in her hands. Her boots pounded the concrete, crushing it to gravel under the weight of the MJOLNIR. She had always been fast, but this new armor was a whole other level, the last word in combat enhancement and protection. Like a greyhound, she sprinted through the concrete warren of the intake terminals and attained the stairs leading to the top floors. Her blood sang in her ears, and she smiled tightly. This was what she had been designed for, raised for; she was a hunter, made to destroy the monsters that lived in the dark.

Reaching the top level, Charlotte skidded to a halt and brought her rifle up. "Sniper cover in position. I see two Wraith tanks, a half-dozen Elites, and maybe twenty other infantry pushing up the middle, right for you, Commander." She zoomed in as far as the scope would take, and the image of a snarling Elite centered in the round reticule. "I'll see what I can do to trim those numbers a bit."


	3. Chapter 3

_Seung MAC Facility_

_Maenali III, Maenali System,_

_January 5, 2552, 1249 Hours, Standard Military Calendar_

Matt ran along the outer retaining wall of the MAC concourse, crouched down to avoid making an easy target for the Wraith tank busy blasting away at the facility. The Covenant jack wagon driving the thing couldn't shoot straight, but sooner or later he'd get it right, and that would be _very_ unpleasant. On the plus side, Matt only had to stay lucky for another fifteen or so seconds as the range dropped, so perhaps this would work out after all.

A civilian medic was crouched down behind the retaining wall, unknowingly in a perfect position to intercept the Covenant making their way across the landing fields. He had an M6D handgun in his fist, and risked a quick glance over the wall, obviously ready to use it. Matt grinned beneath his helmet, pleased with the medic's initiative. "I wouldn't bother with that one if I were you, Medic."

The medic's head jerked around and his jaw dropped as his eyes drank in the sudden appearance of a huge Spartan, fully armed and armored in his deep blue. "Your M6 is a fine weapon, but we have a far superior tool at hand." Matt pulled a huge, bulky weapon from the magnetic clamps on his back and sliding his assault rifle into its place. "Like this here. Its proper name is Weapon/Anti-Vehicle Model 6 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Rifle."

The medic stared openly at the Spartan as he hefted the huge weapon onto his shoulder and popped up over the wall to take aim at the enemy tank. "What the hell does all that mean, Spartan?" The medic asked confusedly.

The Spartan glanced over at the medic, and he could feel the Spartan's amusement. "Means it's a big ass laser, friend." Faint red light lanced out, tickling the enemy tank, until the Spartan stroked his trigger. A beam of harsh crimson blasted out with a howl of electronics and superheated air, and the tank slammed to the concrete and died in flames. "Commander, one down, two to go. How are you doing this fine evening?"

Logan pressed her spine to the wall, listening intently to the sounds picked up by her armor's microphones. The armor made this cat and mouse gig _so_ much easier than it had been on Onyx. There, she had hunted fellow recruits, and sometimes her instructors; here, she hunted monstrous aliens that cheered in glee when they murdered Humans. "I'm hunting the bastards, Matt, how do you think I'm doing? Finish up with those tanks, and get ready- this thrust can't be the extent of the Covenant penetration, or they would've been stopped on the perimeter."

Matt's acknowledgement light winked on, and Logan turned back to the task at hand. Securing her MA37 for the moment, Logan pulled her M319 from her thigh lock and loaded a grenade into it. She loved to fight close-quarters, using her superior speed and agility to grind Covenant heavies into dirt up close and personal; it reminded her of something her father once said on one of his infrequent visits home: _"The Covenant are tough and wily bastards, but they never learn. They rely too much on their armor and numbers to keep 'em alive. In close, a few grenades and a few hundred rounds of 7.62 turns 'em into dog meat."_

Grunting whispers from around the corner alerted her. A barking, yappy voice spoke up, "spread out! Look close- Demons are here!" Nervous barks answered that voice, announcing at least six Grunts. Logan grinned evilly, adrenaline pumping through her body.

With a deep breath, Logan whirled around the corner, aiming the -319 carefully, and squeezed the trigger. The Grunts squealed in surprise and terror, slowly trying to get their weapons in line on the lithe blue Spartan, but Logan was already gone, dodging around the wall left of her original position. The Grunts' confusion was short-lived however, as the explosive core of her grenade detonated, hurling searing metal shrapnel scything through their bodies and inflicting tremendous concussion on their nervous systems. Blasted apart and hurled even further by leaking methane tanks, two of the Grunts were hurled into their fellows. One had the poor judgment to let go of his overcharging plasma pistol, which discharged. The boiling blue-green energy splashed harmlessly into the deck, but the heat caught the methane leaking from the tanks, and incinerated the remaining badly wounded Grunts in a brilliant secondary explosion.

With a chuckle, Logan broke the -319 open at the action, ejecting the spent casing, and slapped in a new grenade. A roar echoed down the concourse that led up to the facility, joined by three others and the cackling of Grunts and Jackals. Four fast _cracks_ and a startling _freem! _accompanied by a searing red beam of light answered. Charlotte's voice echoed in Logan's ears next. "Commander, I have three Elites, nine Jackals, and twelve Grunts inbound your position. They must have worked their way up the cliff. Be advised, I have no shot, because they're under the Concourse awning now. I'm relocating; suggest Echo Two do the same. There's another pair of Spirit dropships inbound, left and right flank. I'll go left if Two can go right."

Matt's voice came up next. "I'm already gone, three. You watch your six now, you hear?"

Logan watched her HUD for a moment, listening to the Covenant infantry moving cautiously closer and the Spirit dropships whirring in on their strange anti-gravity engines. _Okay,_ she thought to herself. _It's time to be stubborn._ Kneeling, Logan peeked around the corner, taking in the formation coming toward her. The Jackals were standing shoulder to shoulder, energy shields held before them, with about half the Grunts in front of them, skulking along the sides. The senior Grunts and their Elite masters advanced behind the wall of energy; Logan nodded. This was behavior she had seen before- the Covenant hated and feared Spartans, referring to them as Demons and going out of their way to kill them. Sometimes, that fear could be turned against the Covenant.

Leveling the -319, Logan carefully judged the distance. If she did this precisely correct, she could break up that line advancing towards her, and then it would be a simple knife-fight, the kind of battle she and her armor were optimized for. The weapon discharged, and the 40 millimeter grenade sailed out, primed and ready. It arced down, sparking on the concrete, and bounced back into the air, tumbling as it flew. The orange-clad Major leading the troop warbled in surprise as the grenade glittered in the sunlight and smacked him in the helmet.

It detonated a split second later, hurling the Major backwards in a spray of purple blood, and claimed two Jackals and three Grunts at the same moment. They tried to reform their line, Logan had to give them that, but it was already way too late. Her second grenade bounced through the gap and shattered the legs of the Jackals, spraying their purple blood to mix with the glowing blue Grunt fluids on the deck. In all, it was a splendid scene of slaughter.

Logan locked the grenade launcher to her thigh plate and unlimbered her assault rifle. She needed to save some grenades for the inevitable follow-up waves that were on their way, and the Covenant in front of her, battle-maddened and now _really_ angry, were too close to use the grenades effectively anyway. Logan dipped out once more and opened up, short bursts of 7.62 millimeter fire tearing into the enemy. She went after the Grunts first, making sure those little bastards couldn't get close enough to 'light her path on the Journey' with their plasma grenades, and proceeded to grind them up within seconds. The three remaining Elites kicked their two Jackals ahead of them, and Logan quickly felt the heat of plasma splashing against her shields. Bobbing and weaving quickly, Logan gave ground, using a concrete visitor's board to break the contact long enough to eject her spent magazine and slam a fresh one home.

As soon as the bolt slammed closed, Logan dodged out again. On the stairs stood the hulking blue form of the first Elite, splashed in his boss' blood. The alien opened up with his plasma rifle, splashing hot energy everywhere on the walls but not actually hitting Logan very often. Logan herself was much more focused and calm, blowing out a half breath and locking her hands on the assault rifle. At a distance of just twenty meters, the armor-piercing rounds that flew on plumes of fire from her weapon pounded down the enemy warrior's shields and shredded his face, evacuating his brains across the back of his helmet.

His companions were to blood-crazy to worry at the loss of their comrade, however, and simply kicked him aside. Logan took the opportunity to unload the other half of her magazine into the second Elite up the stairs, using the assault rifle like a buzz-saw to rip the Elite's belly open. Feet tangled in his own guts, that warrior tumbled face-first into the concrete with an agonized howl and a sick _crack_ as the concrete finished the job by snapping his neck.

The bolt locked back, and the digital readout glowed a cheery _zero_, but Logan couldn't fall back just yet. The third Elite, screaming with battle-lust, was crouched, arms open, ready to charge forward into a shattering embrace that would destroy even Logan's advanced physiology. So, with no time to reload, and running merely another form of suicide, Logan took her only sure option. Setting herself, she used every ounce of her modified body's strength and power to charge the Elite, swinging the butt of her rifle up into a shattering uppercut that caught the Elite right between his mandibles.

The impact lifted the Elite straight off his feet, crushing the lower part of his skull and completely dislocating his spinal structure. Central nervous system severed, concussion and bone shards destroying his brain, the Elite crashed down in a heap over his two comrades. Logan swiftly bent down, scooping up its plasma grenades, and with practiced flicks hurled them at the feet of the two remaining Jackals. With a harsh blue flash that burnished silver highlights on Logan's Close-Quarters Battle armor, the threat was ended.

Logan ducked behind cover, re-taking her previous position, and let her plaintively beeping shield system recharge. "This is Echo Lead. Front door is secure."


	4. Chapter 4

_Seung MAC Facility_

_Maenali III, Maenali System,_

_January 5, 2552, 1300 Hours, Standard Military Calendar_

_Mendez warned me there'd be days like this,_ Matt thought to himself ruefully. Ducking under a low banister, he skidded to a halt just long enough to turn and hurl a grenade up the hallway. The Covenant had chased him up the level, trying to corner him, and Matt had led them a merry chase. _Just blow up a few tanks with a great honkin' laser,_ he thought with a grin, his heart pounding and his arm burning from the plasma strike that had gotten through his shields. _And suddenly everyone loses their sense of humor._

The grenade went off with a heavy _crump_, and the burned body of an Elite minor landed with a wet smack on the tile. Matt took a moment for a deep breath, suppressing the hot agony in his arm for now, and popped out around the corner with his rifle. The MA37 had a magazine capacity of 32 rounds, and a maximum rate of fire of 550 rounds per minute, just about nine rounds a second, and could empty its magazine in just under four seconds; conveniently, just about the maximum time anyone in combat should expose himself. _Well, when in doubt…_

With the corridor only about seven feet wide and seven tall, the Elites had nowhere to go as Matt filled the space with hot lead. Two danced and wilted like flowers under a blowtorch as the rounds chewed deep into them, their shields already eliminated by the grenade, and the remaining three jerked back, warbling in surprise and outrage. _Right, time to be somewhere else,_ Matt thought, ejecting the spent magazine and slapping in a new one as he ran. Those Elites were going to be _really_ pissed now; first the tanks, then all their cannon fodder, and now two of their buddies… yup. Pissed about covered it.

Still, not at all a bad equation for Matt. The angrier Elites got, the less they thought, and the damned dinosaurs weren't so much a danger if they ran screaming after you. It was when they got sneaky, started trying to use tactics, that they got really dangerous. Another turn and a hastily shouldered-open door brought Matt out into a small garage he had spotted in his initial sprint through the building. He always did one when he got the chance, sprinting through his new environment, noting fire-suppression systems, back doors, and any small-arms lockers that were ever-more increasingly standard issue for all UNSC and public buildings. This time, he had really come up aces. _If the damned dinosaurs were angry with me _before_,_ he thought with an evil grin. _They're going to be absolutely _boiling_ after this little stunt._

The first warning the Elites had that anything had gone seriously awry for them as they swarmed through the door after the dark blue Demon was when 'Thalamee was split in half by a tungsten round, accelerated by magnetic fields to a substantial fraction of the speed of light. His atomized purple life-blood sprayed his two comrades, who skidded on its slickness as they tried to get out from under the murderous heretic's fire. Looking up, 'Andamee felt his hearts skip a beat as he saw the Demon's strange, visor-less helmet look straight toward him. Hidden behind the ugly flat green of the Gauss Warthog's gun shield, the Demon was unassailable. 'Andamee felt a moment's searing shame as he read the Human writing on the shield- "Look here, smile, wait for flash." 'Andamee screamed, his mandibles open wide, just before a tungsten round blew his chest apart and sent him hurtling into the darkness. To the Journey.

With a smirk, Matt hopped down from the Gauss 'Hog and ran over the Elite's tattered corpses. Yup, that big red fella had been right irritated before he'd been popped. Shame he hadn't had enough time to activate the gun camera- that would have been priceless. Running back to his original position, he opened the COM to his team mates. "Back door is secure. Returning to point alpha."


	5. Chapter 5

_Seung MAC Facility_

_Maenali III, Maenali System,_

_January 5, 2552, 1300 Hours, Standard Military Calendar_

Charlotte slipped up and over the limb of the roof, sliding down with practiced ease to a small ledge encircling the building. It was an unlikely spot to find half a ton of super-soldier lingering, but then, the more unlikely a perch was, the more unlikely the sniper was to get shot, so it came out square. Hefting her rifle to her visor, Charlotte squinted a bit, bringing the zoom function into play and scanning the incoming Spirit dropship carefully. From the blasts and automatic weapons fire down below, Logan and Matt were both doing plenty of trade themselves, and Charlotte gave herself the luxury of worrying for her team mates for a split second.

It was strange, she thought, to work with a team again. They had trained in teams with Gamma company, for sure, but even on Onyx, Charlotte had found herself singled out more often than included. At the time, she had worried that she was somehow less a Spartan than her brothers and sisters in the Company, but with the events of her midnight detachment from Gamma and her assignment here on Maenali, it had become clear that she had been singled out so she could be honed to an even finer point.

And if she was the tip of the spear, it was rather time to put that point into the heart of the enemy. Crouching, momentarily grateful for the deep purple of her armor and how well it blended into the shadows, she took aim. The Spirit dropship carried two weapons, a plasma repeater and a plasma mortar, both of which were very capable of killing a Spartan with minimal effort, so first things first, as it were. They might be potent weapons, but the dropship had to stand still to drop its cargo of enemy troops, and that meant those powerful weapons were nothing more than stationary targets; a rare and treasured luxury in Charlotte's line of work.

_Crack! Crack!_ Two shots slammed the SRS into her shoulder, and the weapons sprayed energy and shrapnel everywhere, clipping a couple of Covies on their way down. Charlotte re-set, picking out an Elite minor- _crack!-_ and next a Jackal Ranger, their little sniper bastards- _crack!_ Dropping her shoulders and kicking with booted feet, Charlotte crushed open the transplex window and wiggled into the building, moving quickly to the opposite side of the large office, to the open window there. She quickly changed her magazine, dropped the bipod at the front of her weapon, and began again. _Crack! _Another Elite._ Crack!_ There went a Grunt racing for the Ghost dropped by the Spirit. _Crack! Crack!_ There went the Ghost in a maelstrom of compromised drive cores.

Another fresh magazine, and time to change position once more. The Covenant had secured their other Ghost by now, but it availed them little. Charlotte waited until it was flanked by the rocky outcrops downrange, then blew apart the head of the Elite driving it; now it would be easy to capture if they needed its firepower later. The Covenant advance slowed and stalled out, pinned thoroughly by the Sniper who had killed all their marksmen before they could deploy and destroyed their heavy weapons with equally methodical measure. Any alien who showed the slightest initiative was rewarded swiftly with a 14.5 millimeter steel-core bullet. This wouldn't last, of course; sooner rather than later, the Covenant would drop a team of sniper-hunters behind or above her, and depend on her focus in the tiny world of her scope to buy them the time necessary to kill her.

_Not much chance of that, buckos,_ she thought, the old anger welling up in her slightly. She carefully managed it, still not sure where it came from. The doctors and Commander Ambrose had warned her of side-effects from the augmentation, but she had never counted on such an insidious touch of rage every time she engaged an enemy combatant. At the same time, though, for all its danger to her and her comrades in quieter times, that same raw, uncompromising rage that so confused her thoughts sometimes also provided her with a razor-fine edge that was hard to argue against.

Relocating again, Charlotte checked her six, looking for any evidence that the enemy had gotten around Matt and might even now be climbing the stairs to sweep the high ground for the sniper they knew was up there. Charlotte pounded out one more magazine at the enemy, reaping a harvest of two Elites, a Grunt, and a Jackal that had the bright idea to cover a Grunt with its shield to the Ghost; shame for the Jackal that the shield didn't provide coverage to its shield arm, and a well-aimed shot could bounce a round up into the Jackal's body.

Now that the enemy would be looking for a sniper up high, it was time to go down low and keep up the heat. There was a small courtyard to Charlotte's left that the Covenant had been pushing toward. It lead to an interior courtyard guarded by automated doors; its straight lines and two possible exits would make for a perfect sniper alley coupled with a fast egress, should Charlotte's luck be outweighed by her opposition's intellect.

The Elites leading what was left of the strike party reacted predictably, rushing out from under a sniper that was no longer there and charging into the building, roaring for blood. Charlotte was there to slake that thirst; purple ichor fairly flowed through the corridor, and the bodies began to stack up, providing an additional obstacle to the Covenant; clawing over their dead comrades bought Charlotte plenty of time for carefully placed headshots that dropped even the burliest Elite with a single strike.

The wave tapered off, and Charlotte stood with a satisfied smile. She swapped out her SRS for her MA37 to conserve her ammunition, and carefully went down to check on the enemy dead. Sometimes they brought her gifts like plasma grenades or concussion rifle, two of her favorite things to turn on the Covenant. Sometimes the enemy liked to play dead, however, and Charlotte had been taught from the beginning to never, ever, take a chance she didn't have to.

As she searched, however, there was a strange shimmer of light behind her, and a nearly subsonic growl. Charlotte whirled, every ounce of her strength and speed in that turn, and swung her assault rifle up. An envelope of searing plasma caught the weapon, splitting it in two with the barest resistance. The force of the energy sword knocked Charlotte backwards, and she let her momentum turn into a backwards somersault. Back on Onyx, Tom B-292 had told her of Special Operations Elites, particularly hard customers who used camouflage generators SPI armor had been designed from to hide from their targets. There were ways, Tom had said, to bypass that advantage and take the tough saurians down.

Method one started with a plasma grenade; happily, there were several available to choose from. She plucked one from her belt and activated it, snapping her arm forward in a blurring throw that connected with a loud clack with the lead Elite's helmet. That Elite gave a despairing cry, tried to wrench its helmet off, and succeeded just as the grenade went off.

Charlotte was still too close to the blast when it went up, and her head ached with the concussion and the keening of her shield alarm let her know that her defenses were temporarily compromised. Her blood was up, however, ringing in her ears, and she shot forward, tearing her sniper rifle from her back as she charged forward. In such close quarters, there was no way that she would be able to hit the fast-moving Elites, but while their camouflage cloaks were down from the blast and they were disoriented, she could press in close and use the solid steel butt plate to effect.

With every ounce of her strength, the swung the big rifle, connecting with her first target so heavily the Elite's shield exploded and his head followed suit. Charlotte let her swing carry her forward, using inertia to keep her moving, and snapped her head around. The grenade and vicious rifle butt had cut down the odds, sure enough, but there were still three stealth Elites to be dealt with here. Ducking the first one's swing, Charlotte danced in between them, dropping her rifle and snatching out her combat knife. Nine inches of razor-sharp steel, it seemed puny to many in comparison to the massive elites around her, but Charlotte had different ideas. She dropped to her knees and grabbed a handful of black-armored leg, driving the blade into the vulnerable knee joint. The Elite howled and dropped, the severed tendons of the mutilated joint refusing to hold its own weight.

The third Elite was ready, however, and hosed Charlotte down with high energy plasma fire. Her shield alarm went from beeping warning to a shrill wail, and she grunted as the impacts heated the hydrostatic layer beneath the tough black fabric to boiling. There was no pain, not yet, but she knew she had to finish this fight, and fast. She launched herself over the wounded Elite and slammed into the shooter, trapping the plasma rifle between them. In her right fist, the combat knife still dripped purple, and Charlotte slammed it into the huge Elite three, four, five times and rode him over backwards, coming up with his plasma rifle in her left hand.

The first Elite had recovered by now, and Charlotte had the barest of margins to react as he flung a plasma grenade at her. She bent and twisted, feeling her body cry out against the sudden, amplified strength of the torque, and it sailed past her faceplate so closely she could see the individual activation runes pulsing. Tucking her chin to her chest, Charlotte rode the blast, feeling nothing at all, and charged flat out for the snarling Elite. There was nothing but the fight for her now, no pain, no hesitation, nothing but the overwhelming desire to destroy the monster in front of her. She charged, and the Elite jerked out its plasma sword, thrusting its twin-pronged blade at her in the same instant she flung herself into the air, using her thousand pounds of armor as a simple battering ram that knocked the Elite back. She slammed her knife into the roaring monster, off hand locked vice-like on the Elite's sword arm.

The Elite roared, and roared again, his sinews like steel cables under her grip, and every time her knife hand slammed into the alien, she felt the visceral _smack_ all the way up her arm. The Elite continued to writhe and struggle, trying desperately not to win, but to _escape_ from this wild, implacable demon, but Charlotte clung to him, grim as Death, and finished the job with a final thrust through his eye.

She rocked to her feet, casting a baleful gaze on the remaining Elite, which scrambled back from her. Never before had she seen an Elite try to escape, but as she glanced down, she understood why. Piercing the left side of her abdomen, all the way through her black armored bodysuit, the first Elite's plasma sword still burned. Having lost her knife in that Elite's skull, she reached out, gripped the energy sword, and carefully pulled it from her body. "Don't worry," she whispered to the Elite, who was scrabbling desperately for his sidearm. "This won't take a minute."

As the last Elite's head bounced down the hallway, Charlotte powered down the plasma sword and staggered to her rifle, scooping it and a Concussion rifle up. Nearly overcome by the pain of her serious wounds, she leaned against the wall, sinking slowly to the floor, and tugged out a canister of bio-foam from her first aid kit. Fitting the nozzle to the rents in her flesh, she injected the cold material in two stinging bursts, packing off the wounds and stopping the bleeding. In addition to the sword wounds, she had three bad burns from the plasma, two cracked ribs, and her bio-monitors indicated bruised kidneys and a laceration of her liver. She was still alive, but until her much-modified body had time, she would be drastically slowed. She tugged off her helmet, wincing at the stench of burned bodies in full force, and popped a wake-up stim and three nutrient tablets to help stabilize her system, replaced her helmet, and stood once more, locking the plasma sword to her belt and dragging her knife from the dead Elite's skull.

She walked carefully to the end of the hall, and focused through her rifle scope again, sweeping for enemy contacts. "Roof here. All clear."


	6. Chapter 6

_Seung MAC Facility_

_Alpha Company's Position_

_Maenali III, Maenali System,_

_January 5, 2552, 1330 Hours, Standard Military Calendar_

First Lieutenant Gerald Morgan ducked down next to his First Sergeant and winced as a blast from an M6 laser turned a Wraith into shrapnel. "First Sergeant, I do believe the Covenant have been repulsed from the other side of the building."

The First Sergeant smiled, her teeth unusually white against the grime ground into her skin. "It would seem so, Lieutenant. Here in a moment, those big apes out in front of us will be able to say the same bloody thing." She tugged the remote detonator out of her fatigues and popped the lid. "Well, sir, shall we dance?"

Morgan laughed aloud, feeling a vast weight lift from his shoulders. "At your discretion, First Sergeant. I don't think the Brutes are ever going to get any _more_ inside the kill zone!" Morgan's small group of Sappers had fallen back behind the company as the Brutes had pressed, seeding the large courtyard leading up to the MAC building liberally with remote detonation Lotus mines and trash cans filled with plastique and shell casings. The company had fallen back, 'scared' of the massive Brutes, and had effectively suckered the hairy nuisances into the biggest meat grinder on the planet. The First Sergeant mashed the button on her detonator, and with a serious of bone-shaking detonations, the fireworks began, shredding and flaying the Brutes in a cataclysmic display of firepower. The Lotus mines went off first, blowing apart the weird chopper vehicles the Brutes so favored and blowing down shields, followed by the trash cans. Each can had been buried at a twenty degree angle, and when the plastique blew, it sent the empty shell casings, hundreds in each one, flying at near-supersonic speeds. The effect was not unlike a three-foot diameter shotgun at close range.

The Brute's surprised howls rose to a cacophony of agony for a few moments, until they were abruptly silenced by the shrapnel, concussion, and raw explosive force in the courtyard. Together, Morgan and his top NCO peeked over the top of the slit trench dug for just this occasion, their battered tan helmets stained with mud and worse, eyes glinting with a savage glee behind gold-tinted shooter's glasses. Morgan broke the silence first, a slow grin spreading over his face. "My, that was _some_ fun." He pressed his radio's transmit key at his throat. "Echo, this is Alpha One. All positions north of you have been secured." He switched over to the strategic channel, and pressed transmit again. "291st, how're we doing?"

Deep in the bowels of the MAC facility, surrounded by thousands of tons of machinery, Lieutenant Colonel Hal Peterson cursed and smacked a magnetic coil with a twenty pound sledge and every ounce of strength his 250 pound, six foot two inch frame could muster. He'd had _enough_ of this damned recalcitrant machine, and that Covenant ship was coming, and this _sonofabitching_ coil WOULD line up!

The jarring impact rang the coil like a multi-million credit bell, and it let out a shrill squeal as it snapped back into its track. Petersen grinned wolfishly and keyed his COM. "Morgan, we're doin', we're doin'. It's damned hard work, but I think we might just pull this off. Just need to finish some delicate adjustments on the magnetic coils and re-initialize the gimble, and we'll have ourselves an operational MAC for that shiny purple bastard!"

_"Roger that, 291. We've repelled the Covenant for now, and Echo is keeping our unwanted guests from sneaking 'round the back way. Sooner is always better than later, but we've got you covered 'till the job's done."_ Morgan sounded like he'd just robbed a candy store, Peterson thought. Happy and hot as hell over a job well done; he couldn't wait to share that feeling with the rest of his Engineers as they blew the _Sanguine_ thingamajig to dust.

_Speaking of which,_ he thought as he glanced around the MAC's firing chamber. Teams of five Engineers worked on each of the huge gun's magnetic rails, checking each magnet and re—seating any that needed it. It was hot, hard work, normally done under AI supervision by a team of a hundred crew over the space of a week; Peterson had twenty men and three hours to work with. They were working with a will, though, calm, disciplined, and rowdy as ever. Most were older men, with muscles hardened by years of hard work on harder machines, and about one in four held at least a Master's degree in everything from social sciences (urban planning) to electronic theory. If any group could bodge this gun together, it was the 291st Engineer Battalion, by God!

"291st, status update!" Peterson's voice was as hard as his biceps as he began assessing the next coil. He kept in close contact with his three Company Commanders, helping each to stay abreast of the Big Picture even as he let them focus on their assigned task. Alpha Company responded first, as usual.

"Colonel, Hodges here. We have the main computer back up!" Hodges' voice was filled with excitement, and Peterson could hear the celebration of the Alpha Company Engineers in the background. They had been busting their humps for two hours, trying to trace out every single fault caused by the EMP of a plasma lance's strike on the nearby generator station. It had been a mistake that the two buildings had even been connected, an accidental cross-wiring that had happened ten years ago, but such things happened, and it was usually Engineers that had to unstick the monkey.

"Well done, Alpha! Redeploy your boys to the reactor spaces and the magnetic coils." Peterson grinned at Hodges' rude comment, and waited for Bradley's Bravos to report in.

Bradley wasn't long to report, his laconic Triumph drawl instantly recognizable. "Well, suh, we got us a bit of a situation. This here reactor's got itself in all kinds of a tiz, and none done here can rightly trace down why. We sorted the cooling system, and the radiation seems to be in normal limits, but the computer's a-claimin' that the reactor's damaged and ventin' steam from somewheres." Bradley paused, and Peterson knew he wasn't going to like this. "Suh, I'd like to yank the computer out the loop and run the reactor freehand. What with Alpha's extra platoon down here, I'd have just enough hands."

Peterson was right; he didn't like it at all. "Bradley, that's nuts, even for you. There's a _reason_ the computer runs the reactor." A damn good reason, too, he thought. Humans had learned a long time ago that fusion reactors were capricious beasts under the best of conditions; they could go from fine to Hell in an instant, and there was nowhere _near_ enough lead to contain the monster that fed the MAC if it took it into its head to run wildcat. On the other hand, if it really was a reactor computer glitch, and they _didn't_ bypass it, they might as well pack up and go home. Without the reactor, this MAC was nothing more than an _incredibly_ expensive paperweight on a really big beach ball.

Engineering was all about controlling risk; evaluating what needed to happen against what _could happen_. "Okay, Brad, I want you to take Alpha's boys and run one more sweep over that reactor, see if you can't find a leak that'll shut the computer up. If you can't in two hours, bypass the damned thing and fire up the reactor manually." If nothing else, Bradley was two courses short of a Doctorate in Fusion Engineering. If anybody could run that blasted thing naked, it was him.

"Constellation here, sir. The debris field is cleared, and we're cutting away the locks on the firing doors. We'll have the shroud back in about an hour." Lieutenant Niota sounded out of breath, and Peterson thought he could hear the whining of servos in the background.

"Niota, what in the hell are you using up there? It sounds like one of those old exo-suits the Corps mothballed ten years ago." The Engineering Corps had constructed sealed, powered suits designed to make each individual Engineer the equivalent of ten men about fifteen, twenty years ago. The idea hadn't quite panned out, since the suits needed to be tethered to a power source in order to make it work, but they could still be scrounged if one looked hard enough.

"That's because it _is_ an exo, sir. And if you'll excuse me, the meter's running and the damn thing is _really_ uncomfortable." Niota clicked off, and Peterson shook his head.

_We might just pull this off,_ he thought, looking around as another forty men from Alpha poured onto the coils. "Attention Alpha Company, attention Echo team, this is 291st Actual. Estimated time to completion of repairs is three hours."

_Seung MAC Facility_

_Echo Team's position_

_Maenali III, Maenali System,_

_January 5, 2552, 1500 Hours, Standard Military Calendar_

Charlotte blinked hard, forcing her eyes to focus once more. _The only problem with those wake-up stims,_ she thinks to herself irritably,_ is that the damn things don't last._ The truth of the matter is that her body, genetically and chemically altered by the Spartan program, breaks down anything in minutes, no matter how strong it is. Coupled with the searing pain in her abdomen and the buzzing in her head from the adrenaline shock, she knows she's going to have to cling to her focus as tight as she can.

Especially since the Covenant had apparently seen fit to draw deep on their reserves, maybe figuring out that the MAC facility was still repairable. Three Wraiths, showing scars from the Army's determined resistance, slid on cushions of negated gravity toward the facility. Behind them, a dozen or so Ghosts, piloted by Elites, rode herd on two-score assorted Covenant troops. "Echo lead, this is Three. I have a big knot of Covenant troops, fifty plus, three tanks and a dozen Ghosts, moving up this way. How do you want to play this?"

Logan, down on the ground floor, pulled up the small icon of one smiley-face handing a flower to another, and a small screen popped up on her HUD, direct feed from Charlotte's sniper scope. _Hmm. That seems like rather a large bunch of bad guys to try and take out all at once,_ she thought grimly. _Then again…. _"Stand by, Three, I think I might have an idea that'll level the playing field a bit." She blinked at another icon, this one a universally recognizable mushroom cloud with cross bones beneath it. "Echo One to Fire Base Phoenix. You fellows still accepting trade?"

A dusty voice back at the UNSC artillery position came back immediately. "_Roger that, Echo One. Do you have coordinates for us?"_

"Affirmative, Phoenix. Covenant in the open, armor and infantry. Fire for effect." Logan pointed her small laser designator at the lead tank and smirked as she saw how many of the Covenant troops were in the faint red circle painted by her HUD.

_"Roger, Echo One. The package is sent; hold onto your helmets." _The Phoenix fire-coordinator clicked off, and a second later, Logan heard the whistling of artillery shells through the air. 155 millimeter ordnance, she reflected, sure made a lot of racket coming in. As the shells exploded, pulverizing flesh and electronics, the noise of travel was dwarfed by the unearthly roar of death spraying all over a two hundred meter circle. The tanks went up like Roman candles, and Ghosts sailed through the air, slinging components everywhere. In moments, the few remaining Covenant were hurled into disarray.

Nodding with grim satisfaction, Logan keyed in her team COM. "Let's go, Echo! Hit them hard while they're weak!" She vaulted up and over the concourse wall, landing lightly with a cat's grace, and cut out forward, catching in her peripheral vision Matt popping out from the side of the facility, driving a snarling Gauss Warthog. As she looked over, wondering where in the skies he'd scrounged _that_ from, a faint gunmetal blur slid down the roof, bounced down three communications towers, and landed at a full sprint just ahead of the light reconnaissance vehicle. Without hesitation, Charlotte swept her hand out and snagged a handhold, vaulting into the passenger seat and drawing her long SRS from her back.

With a snort and a smile, Logan cut over from her original track, and Matt gunned the motor. "Hey there, Commander," he quipped, skidding to a halt next to her. "Going my way?"

Logan jumped up onto the turret, noting with a certain alarm the blackened crater in Matt's left shoulder pad and the scorched, bloodstained holes in Charlotte's bodyglove. "Naturally, Lieutenant. Are you two all right?"

Matt nodded, his GUNGNIR helmet making the gesture almost comic in its exaggeration. "Our young Sniper here saw the worst of it. Seems she ran into a SpecOps Elite team and didn't invite us to the party."

Charlotte hunched her shoulders, obviously embarrassed. "If I had known soon enough, I would have cheerfully sent them your way, Matt. I like this armor too much to have it carved up by some jackass dinosaur."

Checking the Gauss weapon in front of her, Logan cut in. "I'm just glad you're both all right. Let's finish this job, Spartans, and stay alive, understood."

Both Spartans in the front seats gave their replies, and Matt gunned the engine, sending the LRV bouncing over the low, rolling hills toward the lakefront beach and the Covenant troops picking up the pieces of their advance. Elites roared in anger, Jackals desperately ducked behind hand-held shields, and wailed in terror as the olive drab machine thundered towards them. Logan zeroed in on an Elite, and as Matt mashed the horn and the throttle down simultaneously, she fired, carving up the Elite and blasting a hapless Grunt in the process. Charlotte steadied her rifle and it began to boom, bullets carving the air on white contrails, toppling an Elite and a pair of Grunts that had been scrambling to get their fuel rod gun up and aimed. Matt settled for a simpler method of destruction, simply aiming the massive tow hooks that inspired the M12's _nom de guerre_ and ramming them through an Elite's midsection. The huge alien screamed in pain and rage until the Warthog's massive tires sucked it under. With a hard bounce and a vivid splash of cobalt-laden blood, the Elite was gone.

Matt dragged the wheel around and yanked the parking brake mercilessly, snapping the big machine around in a 180 bootlegger turn, and crushed the accelerator again, coming about for another pass. A clutch of Grunts fell victim to the marauding tires this time, along with an Elite who had flipped a badly dented Ghost to Logan's Gauss and the last two surviving Elites fell to quick shots from Charlotte's rifle. _She has a real gift for that, _Logan thought happily. _Gotta remember to turn her loose every chance I get._

A dark shadow fell over the Warthog, and with dread coiling in her belly, Logan looked up. The fishhook shape of the Covenant destroyer loomed, silhouetted against the setting sun, its plasma lines already glowing hot. Logan had seen that before, and even as she opened her mouth to call a warning to Matt, he had hooked the machine around hard and was racing away from the facility. There was nothing more than they could do, and Logan felt bile searing her throat at the thought of the nearly two hundred Engineers of the 291st and the tough fighters of Morgan's Alpha Company, about to be destroyed because they had hung in as long as they could… and come up short.

_"All UNSC forces, ground and freeze!"_ a voice cracked over the all-hands circuit._ "MAC rounds imminent! Hold on to something!"_

Without hesitation, Matt slammed the brake pedal down so hard the titanium alloy bent twenty degrees. The wheels dug into the soft soil, skidding the 'Hog to a halt. As soon as the machine ceased its movements, all three Spartans hurled themselves from the vehicle and threw themselves prone. Logan flung out her hands, clapping her left hand down on Matt's thigh and her right on the back of Charlotte's helmet.

Before them, the massive doors protecting the MAC retracted, and the enormous muzzle of the gun slipped into view. Nearly two kilometers long, those four prongs of magnets latched onto a ferro-titanium slug weighing thirty tons, and with a surge of power that pushed its reactor to the limit, slammed the slug down their length in less than a heartbeat. The metal glowed as the friction of the atmosphere tried to resist the raw speed of the projectile, accelerated to a sizeable fraction of the speed of light. The air, unable to withstand that kind of force, was hurled back, the concussion of the full-power shot creating a sound so monstrous that the MJOLNIR helmets of the Spartans simply closed down to save their hearing. The ground rippled under the force, and Logan was sure there was no window on the _planet_ that was still in one piece. The shock shoved a wall of air over them, and only their closeness to the ground saved them- the Warthog was hurled end over end like a child's toy, landing a hundred yards away, pressed flat against a rock.

For all its violence, the shockwave was absolutely nothing compared to the unbelievable kinetic _force_ it exerted on the destroyer. Its shields, capable of withstanding three fleet-borne MAC slugs, flashed opaque and collapsed at the first caress of the point-blank shot. The MAC round, now fully molten, carved through decks and crew with a murderous touch that ignited the interior atmosphere and simply atomized its advanced fusion reactor before blasting through the other end and continuing into space.

The destroyer, its hull bent and splintering from the raw energy of the impact, spun up and over on its long axis, tumbling out towards the massive Lake Epcosz. Burning from within, shattered from without, as it slowly arced into the deep black waters, the only sounds Charlotte could hear over her COM and her own thundering heart was the sound of wild cheering from the Army infantry and Engineers that had made this strike possible. With a sudden wild exultation in her heart boiling over, Charlotte grabbed Matt's shoulder and Logan's arm and added her voice to the cacophony.


	7. Chapter 7

_Camp Wallace_

_Maenali III, Maenali System,_

_January 5, 2552, 2000 Hours, Standard Military Calendar_

Charlotte moved slowly towards the small pre-fabricated building serving as Echo's barracks. Her belly burned, both from her wounds and hunger, her bones and muscles ached, and her mind buzzed with exhaustion and post-combat adrenaline let down. She wanted nothing more in the world right at that moment than a hot shower, some MREs, and the chance to sleep, even if only for a half an hour. Then she could go out and save the world again, she thought ruefully. _How about it, world? Can you spare a girl for two hours without melting down?_

The door creaked open, swollen by the cool humidity in the mountain air around Wallace, and Charlotte pulled her helmet off, drawing in a deep breath to help clear her mind. She was just about to head for the armorer 'bot when a hand landed gently on her shoulder. Swinging around, she recognized Matt's tufts of soft brown hair and twinkling gray eyes. "Sorry, Shipmate, but as soon as we're out of armor, we're to report to the aid station for a complete overhaul."

Charlotte looked longingly towards the showers at the end of the barracks, and breathed a deep sigh. Yes, she hurt, and yes, it was a good idea to go get checked over, but… "Okay, Lieutenant. We may as well get this over with, right?"

Matt nodded and stepped into the armorer 'bot next to his rack, letting the deft mechanisms do their work and pull off his armor. Technicians would be by to repair battle damage and check for malfunctions or breakdowns in a few minutes, but they rarely needed the Spartans themselves as they went about their exacting work. "Right, Charlotte. At any rate, you'll like the doctor. She's been with the camp here for a month or so, and before that she was assigned to the _Thunder of Spring,_ a cruiser I was aboard for a while before Echo was formed. She's a little crazy, but she might have made a good Spartan."

A good Spartan. Very high praise indeed for the good doctor, Charlotte thought, watching as the 'bot detached her armor from her body and connected it into an empty shell on the mannequin-shape behind the armature. "She sounds like a hell of a lady, Matt." Charlotte looked down over the swell of her chest, wincing at the burn holes in the bodysuit. She knew that by the Grace of God that plasma sword had missed or at least not severely damaged anything in there, but it still hurt like fury. "I hope she goes easy on me, at least first time through."

Chuckling, Matt stepped back, peeling back his armored body glove and reaching for a set of utilities and standard-issue UNSC Army fatigues. "The doctor doesn't go easy on us, herself, or anyone else, but she likes a challenge and I truly don't think there's any way to get so dead she can't do _something_ for you." Charlotte smiled and glanced over at Matt. His armor's left arm had been pretty badly charred, but overall he was in pretty good shape, as long as you ignored the black, seared flesh on his bicep, covered by a hard film of biofoam and the myriad lesser burns and nasty bruises across his chest and broad shoulders.

Stripping out of her own bodysuit, Charlotte reflected that it was more than could be said for her. In addition to the angry red cuts in the tightly muscled flesh of her left side, she had two plasma burns and about a dozen serious burns; she sure hoped that _someone_ was up to the challenge, at any rate. Slipping into her fatigues and buckling an M6D pistol around her waist, Charlotte checked to make sure she was presentable, washed her face, and followed Matt across the camp's tracks and grassy hillocks. Warthogs rolled by, their V-12 engines snarling, and squads of Army troops marched by here and there. Two Falcons thundered by close overhead, and the two Spartans had to shield their eyes against the dust.

Camp Wallace was a well built Forward Operating Base, FOB, equipped with sophisticated communications, plenty of fortifications, and everything needed to keep a battalion in the field; at least one company was always within its perimeter, augmented by different special operations teams rotating in and out; in addition to Spartans, there were several Army Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols and even a few ODST Helljumpers ambling slowly over to the mess, probably between assignments. The buildings were all pre-fabricated, and hidden mainly beneath the tall, heavy trees native to Maenali III; one in particular had a bright red cross painted on the door, and several medics bustled about, their identifying Asclepius marks painted in red on their helmets.

One of them noted the Spartans and waved them into the field aid station. It was a long, low-ceilinged building, filled with diagnostic and medical equipment, and a dozen beds for critical cases to be watched closely. The Spartans marched past those beds, taking care to be quiet and allow the four Army troops in them their rest. At the rear of the building stood a wooden set of double-doors with the legend 'ADMITTING' painted in white on the ubiquities emerald-drab the UNSC was so fond of. Matt smiled, and held out a hand towards the door; _ladies first._

Charlotte pressed the door open with a smirk for Matt and walked into the admitting area, taking in her new surroundings in an instant. The room was small, only about eight feet square, and mostly taken up with two narrow exam-beds. Stretched out on one of those, half-square glasses perched on the end of a delicate nose, was a female with crystal white hair and fine features. Wrapped in a stained, frayed lab coat and wearing an old-school stethoscope around her neck, she was, apparently asleep.

Matt came in close behind Charlotte, easing the door closed, and simply stood next to her for a long moment. She glanced at Matt, and then the doctor, slightly confused as to what she was supposed to be doing. Was this woman their doctor, or what? "I can hear you two breathing, you know. There's no need to be so quiet and meek. Doesn't suit you Spartans."

Charlotte started slightly, focusing again on the doctor. Where a moment before she had been seemingly sound asleep, she swarmed now with an intense, disciplined energy that was… enervating. "Right. You two have been hurt, and fairly badly too. We'll take a look at you first, -018." She pointed at the exam table she had been sleeping on moments before. "Well, come along, now. Your infrared tag in your fatigues tells me your designator and your blood type, so don't fret. I'm not psychic, merely well equipped." She touched her glasses, and Charlotte realized belatedly they must be like her own helmet visor, sensitive to several wavelengths; useful for a doctor. Charlotte turned and sat on the exam table, a little unsettled by this strange doctor.

Matt, however, wasn't put off at all. "I'll say you're well equipped, doc," he grinned, looking at the small woman with a comically lustful expression. "So whaddaya say? You going to let me treat you to dinner this time?"

The doctor reached over and slapped his knuckles lightly. "Shut it, you. And strip to your skivvies, both of you. I can't treat what I can't see." As Charlotte did as ordered and began to lie back on the bed, the doctor noticed the momentary flicker of pain that crossed Charlotte's face. The doctor laid a cool hand on her forehead, and Charlotte was amazed at how good it felt; like a mother's touch, she realized. If the Covenant hadn't stolen that from her. "Rest easy, -018. My name's Rio Hale. I'll set you back to rights, and get you back into the field where you want to be."

Hale pressed the her antique stethoscope to Charlotte's chest, listening intently to her respirations and heart. "Well, chest seems clear, that's good; her fingers probed the various bruises and wounds scattered over Charlotte's torso. Pausing over Charlotte's left ribs, Hale quirked a smile. "Call me a dirty name. I didn't think anything could crack a Spartan's ribs."

Matt looked over, a dirty grin on his face. "Well, if it's Spartan _bones_ you're interested in…" He caught Charlotte's eye and winked; with a sudden flash of intuition, she realized Matt was afraid of doctors, probably had been since the extensive and incredibly painful physical augmentations every Spartan endured. His banter was a way to take his mind of his fear, and to help Charlotte feel better about her near brush with death at the same time. _He might be an unconventional officer,_ she thought with a small smile. _But I'm glad he's _my_ officer. Him and Logan both._

Almost as though thinking her name had summoned her, Logan appeared, dressed also in standard-issue fatigues. "Evening, Doctor Hale. What's the word? Will they live?" Logan looked over her two Spartans, and Charlotte instantly recognized the deep concern in her eyes. That concern was rooted in many things, she thought; devotion to duty, to the mission, those were hard wired into any Spartan. Concern for one's team mates was an almost instinctual, primal thing, especially in the Spartan program where death was so much a part of life; it took a special kind of person, the best of the Spartans, to rise to command. Seeing the look in Logan's eyes, and the sizeable pile of mangled corpses in front of the MAC building, Charlotte had to say Logan certainly fit the bill as _best_.

Smiling softly at the much taller woman, Hale nodded. "Charlotte here is most severely wounded, with plasma burns and a pair of deep puncture wounds, probably from a plasma sword. Her body has already begun the healing process with the type of alacrity I've come to expect from you Spartans." She looked down at Charlotte and slapped her thigh gently. "All the same, you came damn close to dying. If that Elite had been a quarter inch closer to midline, you'd have been dead before you hit the ground. _Don't_ do that again."

Logan gave Charlotte a stern look, and Charlotte blushed slightly, something she hadn't done since she was ten. "Listen to your doctor, Lieutenant. I need you alive and fighting." _Alive and fighting_. So much of the Spartan life revolved around those words. As long as you drew breath, you fought. For Earth, for Humanity, for the Colonies, for your team, for people you would never meet, for people who were already carbonized skeletons on dead worlds. So much was said with those three words.

Hale had turned to Matt now, sliding a hand-held MRI over Matt's arm and chest. "This one's in fine spirits. He's propositioned me four times in the last hour, so that's always a good sign. This burn is pretty serious, but some topical steroids and a good meal should take the worst of it off. Be careful with this arm for a few days, as much as you can, and you'll be fine." Matt smiled and made a predictably off-color joke about _fine forms_, and Logan laughed, a surprising, womanly sound.

"All right, you two; hit the showers and eat. We'll be reassigned in six hours, so make the most of what we've got." Logan smiled warmly at her team. "And well done out there, both of you. You saved a lot of lives today, maybe even a whole world." As she made to exit, Logan turned back for a moment, eyes sparkling. "And how often do you get to tell a girl you saved the world, Matt?"


	8. Chapter 8

_UNSC Prowler _Light Fighter

_Maenali III, Maenali System,_

_January 6, 2552, 0200 Hours, Standard Military Calendar_

His arms crossed behind his back, Commander Paul Walker watched as the stars spun in their paths. "Operations, has there been any update from Task Force 150?" The task force, formed of the fleet cruiser _Thunder of Spring_ and her five escorts, were due to arrive sometime in the next twenty-four hours to help sanitize the Maenali system and drop some reinforcements on Maenali III. The uncertainties of Slipspace travel were a bastard when it came to coordinating the arrival of Human ships. Naturally, the Covenant had no such problems.

"Negative, Commander. We're reading some weird fluctuations in Slipspace, however. If I had to guess, I would say the Covenant are sending something our way." Lieutenant Marco Sanchez glowered at his screen. "I've got a bad feeling about this, Commander."

Walker nodded slowly. "Leona, I have an idea. I need you to run some numbers for me, and please inform Lieutenant Ceran that I have a job for his Marines."

With a flash of dark red light, _Light Fighter's _AI Leona flared to life on the holopad next to Walker's command chair. "Indeed, Commander? Is it to the same standard of derring-do and mad inspiration I have come to expect of you?"

Quirking a small smile, Walker nodded slightly. "Why, Leona, when have I ever disappointed you?" He stared steadily out the viewports as the sleek, organic hulls of Covenant vessels, eight in total, ripped through the fabric of reality to re-emerge in the Maenali system. _Welcome, you bastards,_ he thought, anger and fear coursing through his body as though his blood had turned to needles. _I'm going to help kill you all._

The next hours passed with a deceptive speed. The crew of the _Light Fighter _had seen this happen before, a dozen times and more in the past twenty years of war; the fleet was small, comparatively, yet made up of three destroyers and five frigates as it was, it could blast apart three times their number of UNSC ships. There were ways of evening the odds, however; fighting dirty.

Walker was a student of Preston J. Cole, Humanity's finest naval officer; he had studied most of Cole's engagements, and tried every day to think of something impossible to do with a Prowler and a way to pull it off. This particular dirty trick was one of the first that Cole had run into, more than thirty five years ago.

Lieutenant Ceran, his face occluded by a full-face vacuum rated helmet over his standard Marine battledress, led his men over the scarred surface of one of Maenali's many largish asteroids. There had been three moons in the system once, but a collision with a massive rogue asteroid had shattered one all to pieces; one of the reasons Maenali III had been settled in the first place was because it was well-hidden in the cloud of rocks and the dust of a nearby nebula. The Marines were playing a vital role, setting up two installations on the hunk of iron and rock spinning in the darkness.

"Operations, any sign of deviation by the Covenant battlegroup?" Walker glanced sidelong at Sanchez. Part of the plan had to include a convincing lure; that lure was the _Light Fighter_ herself. The Covenant hated the small, stealthy ships, primarily because the Prowler Corps was forever sneaking in close to the enemy, leaving little 'care packages' for them, blasting apart shipyards, and gathering intel that could possibly lead UNSC ships to Covenant-occupied worlds. Walker had the ship 'hiding' in the asteroids, looking for all the world like they were trying to blend in and failing just _enough_ to be visible.

"Negative, Commander. The enemy is still accelerating straight for us. I estimate they'll be within firing range in seventeen minutes." Sanchez's voice was rock steady, but Walker could see the white knuckles gripping his old-school wooden pencil as he ground out firing solutions by hand next to his station.

"Lieutenant, you have fifteen minutes," Walker said, his voice emerging from Ceran's headphones after being transmitted by laser; the tight electronic transmission would be nearly undetectable. Ceran needed to keep to a very, very strict timetable, or he and his thirty Marines would suffer a dread fate, indeed.

Ceran, bracing himself against the light gravity of the planetoid, grinned tightly. All of twenty two years old, in the Marine Corps from the day he turned eighteen, and the Commander was having kittens over a laser. _Sometimes, _he thought with a shrug,_ senior officers just don't have any faith. _His platoon was almost done, six minutes ahead of schedule, and Ceran flashed his acknowledgement light rather than waste the air to speak.

Giving a flurry of hand signals, the young Marine officer gave the order to pull the laser drill from the rock and secure the bulky machine. It took five Marines to run the silly thing, but it had bored a thousand meter hole through granite and iron in ten minutes; worth the effort and risk, for certain. It was time to finish the job, however, and the sooner it was done, the sooner they could get off this forsaken rock. "Move the package into position. Blue team, have we got the repeater up yet?"

Second Lieutenant Carol Rayder responded immediately. _"Roger that, Red One. We have the Parrot in position, falling back to the Pelican now."_ Rayder's team had set down on the opposite side of the rock, setting up a standard encrypted transponder, known in the parlance as a 'Parrot'. Much like the lures Ceran's great-grandfather had taught him to make in the Colorado Rockies back home, the Parrot would be an irresistible draw to the massive enemy ships charging at the _Light Fighter_.

"Very good, Blue One. Return to base, and save some coffee for us." Ceran made sure Rayder's acknowledgement light winked on, and turned back to the large black steel cylinder being dragged into position. Sixteen keystrokes, a code burned into his memory, and the cylinder went on, buried deep in the hole. _Sure hope the Commander knows what he's up to,_ Ceran thought grimly.

_Maenali System Asteroid Belt_

_January 6, 2552, 0200 Hours, Standard Military Calendar_

The _Light Fighter_ ran before the oncoming Covenant warships like a terrified herbivore, desperately twisting and maneuvering through the asteroids on the edge of the belt as Covenant plasma seared after it. On her bridge, Paul Walker watched his tactical display with a calm detachment, held firmly in place against the gyrations of his vessel by the harness in his command chair. He had learned long ago, at the cost of a shattered right arm, that looking cool was only worth so much when you ran the risk of being hurled across the deck into a titanium bulkhead.

Leona's crimson avatar glowed brightly next to him on her holopad, her long hair swirling about her like a waterfall of flame. "The Covenant battlegroup is gaining on us, Commander, and this close to Maenali III and her moons, I cannot guarantee a Slipspace vector." Numbers scrolled across her holographic body, and Walker smiled thinly.

"Tell me, Leona, do you have a copy of Vice Admiral Preston Cole's service record in your databank?" Leona was an ONI artificial intelligence, assigned to the _Light Fighter_ to help with the collection and analysis of any information gathered by the ship on her travels through the stars. ONI AI could be a little limited, however; the Office of Naval Intelligence could be rather narrow-minded from time to time.

With a blink, Leona diverted a fragment of her attention to looking up Cole's record. "Yes, Commander, but I don't see how that could be relevant to the danger the ship is in-"

"Operations, sound General Quarters." Sanchez acknowledged, and the deep, bonging bells of the GQ alarm began to reverberate through the ship's hull. Sailors and Marines sped through the ship, sealing space-tight doors and manning damage control stations; the Pelicans, sinister and black in their sensor-absorbent material and odd angularity, were fueled and ready to take on survivors and attempt escape, should the worst come to pass, and the ship's complement of Bumblebee life pods were warmed and their hatches unlocked automatically. "Leona, begin analysis of Cole's battle record. I think you can answer your own question, if you take a moment and really look deep at it."

Leona nodded and began working on the Commander's request. The file was huge, spanning fifty five years of active service; and brilliant service, at that. Cole was widely regarded as the best tactician and strategist Humanity had ever fielded. He had fought the Covenant at Harvest, Psi Serpentis, and dozens of actions in between, commanding the UNSC _Everest_ and thousands of UNSC ships in bloody fight after bloody fight, pioneering the use of MAC rounds against Covenant shields, and earning a reputation for a near-fanatical willingness to do what it took to win.

In fact, Leona's central processing matrix warmed a half-degree in startled realization that some said Cole's willingness to win was actually a barely-suppressed death wish. Had the Commander decided now was the time to die? What if he had? What could Leona do to prevent the destruction of the _Light Fighter_- and herself? Scanning the file again, Leona looked carefully at Cole's record of innovation, trying to find a pattern of self-destruction. A fragment of Captain's Log written by Cole aboard the UNSC _Las Vegas _in 2494; in action against Insurrectionists, Cole had committed to a controversial action, transmitting a surrender as a ruse to sucker punch the Insurrectionist vessel. He had written: _"Surrender is quite literally no longer an option for me."_

Was that it? Was Walker trying to distract her from a compromised mental state? _Wait,_ she thought, absently calculating the distance and relative velocities of the enemy ships and feeding them into Operations and Navigation, _this is very interesting._ The action in question, the "Callisto Incident", had formed after the UNSC had sent a battlegroup of three light destroyers after a stolen UNSC corvette, the _Callisto_. The Insurrectionists had planned a sophisticated ambush, involving an asteroid field, forces superior to theirs, and-

Startled, Leona stopped every cycle not devoted to the continued survival of the _Light Fighter,_ and re-checked her logic three times. She activated a camera, aimed at the Covenant battlegroup, just as the largest vessel, tagging itself the _Gilded Devotion_, came abeam of the asteroid Ceran's Marines had mined. A violent burst of light ballooned from the rock, nuclear fury fed and focused by the substance it was hidden inside, and hurled massive ingots of half-molten iron and stone with terrible velocity straight into the shimmering purple, fish hook-shaped vessels. Their shields flashed opaque for a moment, resisting the cataclysmic energy smashing into them, and burst like soap bubbles.

Within seconds, the _Gilded Devotion_ and four of her escorting destroyers were spinning, shattered and burning, deeper into the asteroid field, where, without control, further impacts continued to beat the ships to death in a spectacular display of carnage. Scanning the bridge again, Leona noted the happy exclamations of the bridge crew and the satisfied smirk on Walker's face. "Sometimes, Leona," he said, glancing straight at the camera she was using, an unsettling habit he displayed when he wanted to make a point, "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Now, if you would coordinate with Lieutenant Sanchez and Ensign Crook, I would very much like the ship to be running silent and disappear from some very angry Covenant before they clear the radiation and rock screening us from them."

The Prowler disappeared into the darkness, slipping away from the enemy ships on the virtue of her advanced stealth and the roiling clouds of destruction between it and the sleek, deadly purple ships. Walker kept a careful watch on them, transmitting every frame the _Light Fighter_ recorded to a tiny, unassuming Slipspace buoy, just on the other side of the non-Euclidean veil.

A tear began to appear behind the remaining five Covenant ships, three corvettes and two destroyers as the alien ships arced up and over the twisted, burning hulks of their fellows. From that rent in reality spilled what Walker had been hoping so fervently for. At nearly a kilometer in length, armored in five meters of titanium-A battleplate and carrying three Magnetic Accelerator Cannons on her long axis, the UNSC _Thunder of Spring_ was a new ship, an _Adrastos_-class Fleet Cruiser. Faster than the Everest class, more heavily armed and armored than Destroyers or Frigates, they filled the gap between the _Halcyon_ and the _Everest_ types currently in service. Flanking her were five UNSC ships, three destroyers, angular and intimidating, and two frigates, little more than massive engines connected to a MAC with a belly hold filled with Marines and Pelicans slung beneath.

Forewarned by _Light Fighter'_s efforts, Rear Admiral William Travis wasted no time in targeting the enemy vessels for destruction. On the spacious bridge of the _Thunder, _the Admiral, a grizzled veteran with a spectacular set of facial scars, looked thoughtfully at his tactical board. Standard UNSC doctrine dictated that any naval engagement between Human and Covenant forces must be fought at a three to one advantage… or risk complete annihilation within seconds.

Travis had no option, however. And the _Light Fighter_'s example had just demonstrated that if one was smart enough, that went a long, _long_ way toward evening the odds. He tapped in a few commands to fire control, and flicked his eyes to the deep, vivid purple Artificial Intelligence glowing fiercely next to him. "Sultana, coordinate with fire control across the task force. I want a spread of Shivas detonating between us and the enemy force. I also need another salvo of Shivas detonating against the hulls of the enemy, followed .03 seconds later by a full spread of Archer missiles, and as many MAC rounds as the force can produce .01 seconds after that. Get on it."

Sultana's semi-transparent figure washed over with binary code as she crunched the difficult mathematical formulae. "Aye aye, Admiral. Solutions being plotted."

Travis nodded and stepped to the center of his bridge, strapping himself into his command chair. "Captain Kane, begin maneuvering the ship. Bring us toward the enemy, three quarters full."

Kane, a young captain with his first Line command, locked eyes with his Admiral and gave his acknowledgement. Nearly a kilometer away, the massive fusion engines that drove the _Thunder of Spring_ flared to brilliant life, imparting thrust to the thousands of tons of starship they were housed within. This little stunt needed precise timing, and even then it was likely that the task force was going to suffer. No other options easily presented themselves, however; Maenali III was doomed if those ships stayed intact, and the system was a bare half-light year from Reach, the last UNSC fortress among the stars. The Covenant had to die here, and die quickly. There was no one else available to do the job, so Travis had to lead his sailors into the teeth of hell, one more time.

Sultana flared to life once more as the Covenant finally began to maneuver around the debris field of the shattered alien vessels. "Admiral, all is in readiness. One Covenant Corvette is detaching from the rest of the battlegroup and heading for the planet. Orders, sir?"

Travis looked out at the tiny specks of light that were the Covenant ships. "All ships, fire, maximum effort."

From space, between the two fleets, the show was breathtaking, if heart-stopping. The Covenant ships came about and lunged through space, lateral plasma lines glowing as they heated up. Missiles blossomed from the Human ships, lancing out from the grey ships on white contrails. A dozen of those missiles rocketed out more quickly, exploding in abrupt, violently bright spheres; the nuclear detonations sparked well out in front of the Covenant ships.

To an untrained eye, it might seem as though the Shiva warheads had been wasted, perhaps to a malfunction or an error of trajectory. However, as the Covenant blasted out streams of magnetically-controlled plasma, their accuracy was completely eroded by the electro-magnetic disruption of the warheads. The remaining missiles blasted through the cloud of plasma and radiation, and carried the attack home.

Silvery blurs of light erupted from the bows of the Human ships. Three hundred tons of nickel-iron slug, accelerated to a substantial fraction of the speed of light, was launched from each MAC. They traveled the distance covered by the missiles in minutes in a fraction that time; all at once, it seemed, missiles and MAC slugs arrived on target all at once. The Shivas came in first, their nuclear fury straining the Covenant shields to the limit. The Archer missiles arrived next, finishing of the opaque shields and blasting into armor, and finally the MAC rounds crashed home.

The fury was far too much for the corvettes hiding alongside their larger cousins, and they exploded violently under the strain. One destroyer tumbled, a Corvette buried in its midsection, and found an asteroid the hard way. The last destroyer, burning and pitted, lashed out again, its plasma recharged. The lance of hot matter sliced into the UNSC _Cold Harbor_, a newly-built frigate fresh from the Misriah shipyards. It burned through the meter and a half of battleplate armoring its bow, slashed across the MAC that went down the centerline, and completely bisected the ship. Fire vomited from the vented compartments, and the tiny figures of UNSC crewmen flailed as vacuum stole the breath from their lungs.

The plasma wasn't finished yet. It turned, directed magnetically from the destroyer, and burned savagely into the _Thunder of Spring._ External decks were torn open to little effect; the external decks had already been evacuated of personnel and atmosphere before contact had been made. Bloody damage lights strobed, and Travis winced slightly. Looking over at his Captain, Travis nodded slightly to him. "Hit them again, Captain Kane. Hard as you can."

More MAC slugs lanced out, passing a second burst of plasma that burned deep into the Destroyer _Jeanne d'Arc._ She burned brightly, but the dense nature of her construction prevented her immediate destruction. If the MAC slugs fired from the task force could do enough damage, the _Jeanne_'s damage-control parties stood a good chance of saving their vessel.

The MAC rounds streaked down, and Travis watched, his heart in his throat, outwardly calm. If this didn't work, his sailors were all going to die. The slugs slammed into the enemy ship, and with a tremendous, soundless explosion, the reactors lost integrity and detonated, tearing the ship apart. A single, wild cheer erupted on the bridge, quickly suppressed by Navy discipline. Travis glanced down to his Communications officer. "My compliments to the captains of the task force, and watch out for Covenant Seraphs." He spitted his Operations officer next. "Launch Pelicans to search for survivors of the _Cold Harbor_ and stand by to render assistance to _Jeanne d'Arc._ Sultana, calculate the trajectory of that last corvette, and make contact with the garrison. We need to run that ship to ground, and stop whatever was so important to them, down there on that world. Transmit a request to CENTCOM for a fleet tender, and let's get the Marines aboard _Cold Harbor_ down to the planet's surface. Time is very much against us, I fear."

He stared out at the stars, a shiver working up his spine. "Whatever was worth that battlegroup will bring more of them, like flies to an open wound. We'll need Commander Walker's help to keep this world alive."


	9. Chapter 9

_UNSC_ Cold Harbor

_Maenali System_

_January 6, 2552, 0245 Hours, Standard Military Calendar_

Fires raged in the crew spaces of the mortally wounded _Cold Harbor._ The Covenant plasma had done its job with its usual brutal efficiency, and as Lieutenant (j.g.) Catherine Talus pushed her way through corridor-spaces blackened and warped by plasma and the resulting fires, she felt a rock in her gut that had little to do with the damage. Protected by a tough Navy-issue vacuum suit and a hardened pilot's helmet, Tralus anchored herself to the deck plates and leveled her extinguisher. Fighting fires in zero gravity was an art form, something that most people had no concept of. You couldn't just hose down a corridor like this one; fail to anchor yourself to the deck by magnetic boots or a leg around a railing, and you could fall victim to Newton's laws. Talus had seen sailors break arms… or worse. Triggering a long burst, the chemicals stifled the strange, roiling fire, and just like that, the corridor was clear of fire.

The ship, or rather what was left of it, continued its tumble, but at least the fires were out. They could start evacuating the wounded now; most of the crew was still in their cryo-tubes, safely frozen in suspended animation. One of those already thawed when the _Cold Harbor_ had been struck glided around the corner and wrapped a long leg around the railing, arresting his momentum. Clad in charcoal black armor over black and white mottled urban fatigues, the Orbital Drop Shock Trooper cut a terrifying figure. "All fires aft are out, Lieutenant. I think we're clear. There's a signal coming in from _Thunder of Spring_; the Covenant ships have been destroyed and you're to stand to for transshipping."

The lump in Talus' throat eased slightly as she looked at the tough Marine. A single yellow bar was stenciled on his chest-plate, flanked by the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor of the Marine Corps, and beneath both insignia was a name: Shane, J. Taking a deep breath of scrubbed air, Catherine felt the hard outline of her wedding band press against her breastbone. She'd only been married a year, nine months of that had been spent at Navy OCS on Luna, and then three months sailing aboard _Cold Harbor_ as a Damage Control officer. "You didn't say 'we', Shane," Talus said, her brow furrowing slightly.

Shane nodded slightly. "My platoon's being launched from here, ballistic trajectory, to see what the Covenant found so important to detach a corvette from a battle to find. You and the rest of the crew will be moved over to _Thunder of Spring,_ and the Marines still in cold storage will be thawed and landed on Maenali III to help reinforce the garrison there." He unhooked his leg and drifted across to her. Glancing up and down the corridor in the flickering light, he wrapped an arm around Talus' waist and pulled her against his armored bulk. Pressing his faceplate to hers, he relied on vibration to carry his voice to her ears, without anyone overhearing. "I love you, Catherine. Be safe, and I'll see you soon." Catherine brushed her fingers against his faceplate, and with a twist of shadow against scorched bulkhead, the big Marine, her husband, was gone, moving to the launch bay.

_UNSC_ Cold Harbor

_Maenali System_

_January 6, 2552, 0245 Hours, Standard Military Calendar_

The dark, grim bay, lit with a bloody glow by the General Quarters lights, held an atmosphere of barely contained excitement, seasoned liberally with raw fear. Hell's waiting room, they called it; an apt name. It housed twenty launch tubes, each containing a Human Entry Vehicle, racks of weapons, and a broad briefing table, now cracked with a heavy piece of piping spearing through it. This long, low, bleak space was the center of shipboard life for a very special type of soldier, the Orbital Drop Shock Trooper.

Helljumpers, they were called. Willing to launch from an orbiting starship through a planet's atmosphere, protected by nothing more than a few layers of ablative material wrapped around a titanium crash cage. Feet first into Hell was their motto, and each pod wore the blazing comet insignia of their elite fighting unit. Nineteen black-armored wraiths already prowled the bay, each taking up weapons, explosives, medical kits, nav modules, everything a modern fighting Marine needed.

Shane raked his eyes over the Marines getting ready to embark their HEVs. He knew Helljumpers; not a Marine among them would say a word about any infirmity. Shane had seen Helljumpers nailed to a wall by a Brute's spiker keep on fighting, never once calling out in pain or for help unless they needed to move to help their brother Marines. With a wry smile, he reminded himself of the time he had dropped on a Covenant base camp with a plasma burn on his belly, because his platoon had already been two men light, and he didn't want his brother Marines to go into combat with too many blank files.

He had learned well in Officer Candidate School; pairing his experiences as a private soldier and as a non-commissioned officer with the greater volume of strategy, tactics, and combat psychology had been a revelation to him at OCS. He'd always known that officers worked harder, of course, but _how_ much harder had been a surprise. Silently offering up a prayer he could be so effortlessly effective as his mentors at OCS and throughout his time as a Marine, Shane opened up the team 'net and spoke to his Helljumpers. "Listen up, Marines. Our bus has a flat, so we're hoofing it from here on out. Get set for a combat drop, boys, and keep your heads screwed on straight- there's a Covenant corvette heading for Maenali III and our brothers in Army green down there. It seems the corvette's looking for it, so we're going down to figure out what it is, and deny the enemy their chance at scooping it up." He took a deep breath, and barked out "where are you going, Helljumpers?"

The platoon bellowed back, _"Feet first into Hell, sir!"_

With a wolfish grin, Jeremiah Shane nodded sharply. "Damn right. Button up, my lads, it's time to earn your pay. Drop in three minutes!" The Helljumpers set to work even more quickly, and began to climb into their HEV's. Jeremiah quietly linked into the vitals monitors hooked into each Marine's armor, checking every man for wounds or infirmities. It was something that had been drilled into him at OCS- _"your Marines, like you, will be the hardest fighters Humanity can put in uniform. They will be dedicated, driven, fired by a motivation unparalleled in the history of Human warfare. They will _not_ tell _anyone_ when they are sick, tired, or wounded; the instant they put on their armor, they are determined to be invincible. It is your solemn duty to make certain that no Helljumper drops in less than perfect physical and mental condition. _You_ are the responsible adult in this situation, and to you falls the painful necessity of commanding a Marine to fall out before he can drop. You must do so for you, your platoon, and most importantly of all, for _him.

Mercifully, it was very hard to get sick and stay sick in cryo; the cold and the lack of activity killed most bugs within a few hours, and the Helljumpers had been Marine-cicles for nearly two weeks in transit to the Maenali system. There was one case, however, a Marine who moved a little slowly, a little awkwardly, and tried desperately to evade his squad leader, the Platoon Sergeant, and Shane himself, a most difficult task, indeed.

Shane drifted over and clamped a firm hand on Judson's arm. "Sorry, Private, but you're not dropping with a cracked radius. Fall out and report to Lieutenant Talus for transship to the _Thunder of Spring._"

Judson started to argue, saw the immovable set to Shane's shoulders, and nodded, coming to attention (as best as possible in zero-g) and saluted. "See you on the ground, lieutenant. Good luck!" Without a backward glance, Judson propelled herself towards the hatch, and the lifepod that would be waiting.

Remorse twisted in Shane's belly, along with a tiny spark of guilty relief. He hated to deny any Helljumper the right to jump, but a fracture could quickly turn compound in the rough ride of atmospheric reentry. He knew that Judson would be quietly cussing herself out for being clumsy enough to get hurt when the _Cold Harbor_ had been hit; he just hoped she could forgive herself an accident. As soon as she was healed (a matter of a few minutes in a proper infirmary), she would rejoin her platoon and be welcomed with open arms. In the meantime, she would stay close to Catherine, and Shane acknowledged the tiny guilty voice in his mind that was grateful for the level of protection offered to his wife by the Helljumper.

In the meantime, there was a drop to focus on. As his father had taught him back home, he could think of his wife in two ways- as a distraction that would get him killed, or as a source of strength that would bring him peace even on the worst battlefield, and Catherine was plenty strong enough for the both of them. "Staff Sergeant Gray," Shane called out, and another Marine, smaller than Shane, drifted smartly over and came to rest with a sharp salute. Eyeing the smaller Marine with a hint of regret at how much he had lost, physically, between the Staff Sergeant's twenty three to his own twenty seven, Shane nodded. "Gray, are we all set for drop?"

"Affirmative, Lieutenant. With the exception of Judson, all hands are ready to embark." Gray had only been in the Marine Corps for six years, but his star was notably on the rise. He had been dropped into the shit more than once, and each time had come out on top, never making a stupid call. He hadn't yet signed on for a ten-year hitch, but the day he did, Shane had his OCS orders cut and on file. The ODSTs needed more officers like the laconic Gray.

"Very well, Staff Sergeant. To your HEV, and good luck." Shane returned Gray's salute, and the two leaders split up, heading to their separate ends. As they went, they sealed each Marine into his HEV individually, before climbing in to their own 'eggs' at each end of the line. It was an unspoken law within the ODSTs that the commanding officer of the Marine element always dropped first, in part because of the need to organize the Helljumpers on the way down to seize the most effect from the so-called first 'Golden Hour' of any operation, but it went deeper than that. Voluntarily being shot out of a starship to burn through the atmosphere of a foreign world in nothing more than a fancy metal rock with some parachutes bolted on was not the most comfortable way to get into combat, and officers lead the way for their Marines… especially when the way was harrowing and filled with as much terror as an orbital insertion.

The Covenant sometimes figured that out, unfortunately, and had developed a nasty habit of shooting at the first eggs through the atmosphere, contributing to the rather high mortality rate of Marine Second Lieutenants. That was why the other half of the unspoken rule was that, while Shane would drop first to lead his Marines, Gray would drop last, so that the Marines would be assured of steady leadership from the first moment of the operation.

As Shane strapped in and ran the obligatory systems check on his HEV (all green), he pressed a hand to his chest plate… and the wedding band buried beneath. _God willing,_ he thought to himself as the HEV sealed up, _I'll get to wear that for a long while to come._ Shaking away his thoughts, and focusing on the mission, he initialized one last piece of hardware, a small armored package that conformed to the back of his right shoulder. A flare of blue-green light illuminated his HUD for a moment, and a cultured masculine voice filled his helmet. "Good morning, lieutenant. AI Carapace, online and ready for service."

A small smile creased the officer's face as he glanced up and saw he had ten seconds to launch. "Good morning, Carapace. I've uploaded the coordinates for a drop to you. The _Cold Harbor _will launch us, and you will guide us in, understood?" Carapace was a Grade C battle intelligence; highly adaptive, with an exhaustive knowledge of all things military, he was truly an asset, if a somewhat limited conversationalist.

"Affirmative, lieutenant. Prepare for drop." Carapace had no more uttered the words than Shane braced his head against his restraint and squeezed his eyes shut- a reflexive reaction, as it was pitch-dark inside the sealed HEV. Three chimes sounded, followed by an incongruously cheerful _beep!_ and suddenly Shane felt the fist of an angry god smash his HEV as it was launched magnetically from its tube. Suddenly, there was nothing; no sound, no light, no weight, only his breathing, carefully slow and deep, as the HEV flew through space on a ballistic trajectory determined by Carapace's capable mathematics. In his mind's eye, Shane visualized the scene outside the tiny, near-useless viewports of his capsule. Each pod would fire, in sequence, not unlike cartridges firing from the MA5B at his right hand. Shane had been first, followed next by the Marine behind him (that would be Zhilao), then the Marine to his left (Curtis), and the Marine behind Curtis, and so forth. All except Judson's capsules would clear what was left of the _Cold Harbor'_s hulk in about fifteen seconds, _bang, bang, bang,_ all down the line.

Once they were all in space, with Shane's pod at the foot of the formation and Gray's at the top, Carapace would angle them so they hit the atmosphere shallow enough to avoid incineration and deep enough to avoid bouncing off- in theory, at any rate. The term 'Feet first into Hell' had more than one meaning, and there was a reason the Helljumpers were all-volunteer and crazy. Shane felt the pod strike the atmosphere with a shudder, and he took a deep breath and blew it out, opening his eyes for the first time. Fiery, ghostly tongues of heat flickered past the tiny viewports, and his heart rate spiked; with a savage grin, he let himself feel once more the raw joy and terror of a combat drop. "Okay, Carapace," he managed through the shaking and jolting his HEV leveled on his body. "Let's play 'find the bastard'."

_Pelican Echo 410_

_Maenali III, Maenali System,_

_January 6, 2552, 0300 Hours, Standard Military Calendar_

Rio dozed fitfully in the fast-moving Pelican, her agile mind imagining everything that might wait for her on the other side of this mad dash through the pre-morning murk. She had gotten a 'Case Blue' call about thirty minutes earlier, and had been fully dressed, armored in standard Army ballistic plate, and in the air within ten minutes. Bulky medical gear festooned her kit, along with a suppressed M7 submachine gun collapsed down to its smallest size, and a small frown creased her face; a Case Blue was the code for UNSC personnel in desperate medical condition, fairly rare since the Covenant had an enraging tendency to murder wounded troops before Rio ever even got the call, but when a Case Blue _did_ manage to get out, Rio knew she would need every scrap of her prodigious medical skill and every ounce of plasma, bandages, and medical hardware she could stand- and the M7 with its hundred rounds of ammunition took up seven valuable pounds.

Raising her head and cracking her bright blue eyes open, she swept her gaze over the other occupants of the Pelican. _As if a meager hundred rounds of 5mm is going to save me from whatever gets through all this,_ she thought disgustedly. She was travelling with a whole squad of Army troopers, ten men, armed with everything from the 'Spanker' missile launcher down to the M6 handgun. If anything got through those men, she would be far better off hiding, if she wasn't already dead. _Idiotic regulations,_ she grumbled silently. She didn't mind following the rules, when there was a _point_ to them, but if things got _really_ hairy, she'd ditch the M7 and scoop up an MA37, and get _stuck in_.

The crew chief came aft from the cockpit, face hidden behind a standard Navy-issue flight helmet. That had spawned a whole lot of inter-service grousing, having the Navy detach Pelicans for Army troops to use, but there was nothing for it. The Army got second issue of the valuable dropships, so the Navy had more of them. Rio was just glad she didn't have to take an organ-bruising sunrise ride in a Warthog this morning. "Five to dirt, boyos, five to dirt. Get ready; we can't linger down there without being a bullet magnet."

One of the troopers, Sergeant Marsh, laughed. "Well, seeing as how the dinosaurs only use plasma, you'll be perfectly safe!" The other troopers laughed, and the crew chief shook his head, a mock-sad expression just visible behind his visor.

"It's not the Covenant I'm worried about, Sarge. It's you boys and your itchy trigger fingers!"

That got the whole bay going, and Rio grinned in the shadow created by her heavy helmet. It never failed to crack her up that Navy, Army, and Marines seemed to forget that _she_ was Navy, too, assigned to Maenali III to help ease the strain on the Army's medical corps. Soldiers, regardless of branch, never cared what branch their doctor was from, as long as she was competent and there when they needed her.

Standing in the file, surrounded by big men made bigger by their armor, Rio felt the Pelican swoop in and hover just above the surface of the planet. The crew chief kept his fist closed on Marsh's cuirass until the light turned green, and then whirled aside, his shout of _go!_ mingled with the Sergeant's exhortations. Rio concentrated on picking up her feet and before she knew it, her training had carried her clear of the Pelican, which spun on its thrusters to planetary north and slid away on the quartet of blue flame from her engines.

The troopers remained still for a moment, trusting their ears and the night-vision features built into their new Shooting Glasses to help spot any trouble in the night; all seemed quiet, and Marsh rose into a crouch. The troopers, with Rio in tow, began to move quietly through the silent forest, quickly swallowed up by the faint green gloom of the forest under moonlight. The Army post assigned to watch over this particular stretch of woodland was supposed to be a half-kilometer away, just over the ridge ahead of them.

One hand signal from Marsh opened the trooper formation up into a skirmish line, three men abreast, and Rio found herself securely hidden in the 'pocket', the center of the formation. The air was clean and crisp, heavy with the smell of trees and plants, and Rio stole a moment to look overhead, drinking in the thousands of stars, so different from the ones back home on Earth, and the glory of Maenali III's asteroid ring and its two beautiful moons, one tiny and white, the other perhaps a quarter again the size of Luna and pale green. It was that pale green that illuminated the forest; coincidentally the exact wavelength most easily absorbed by Human eyes.

A sudden flash of harsh white light connected the torso of the trooper in front of Rio to a Covenant plasma rifle. The man, perhaps about nineteen, screamed as his flesh was seared and his life stolen by the bolt of energy that boiled through his face and into his brain. Rio hurled herself flat as the Army troopers engaged, the desperate shout of _contact!_ echoing from nine throats, seemingly simultaneously. Searching the gloom beneath the trees with wide eyes, Rio tried to find the alien bastards, but there was nothing! _Nothing!_ Another trooper screamed and fell right in front of her, glowing, glassy needles perforating his abdomen. The soldier screamed again, trying desperately to yank the glowing needles from his body, and Rio fast-crawled towards him, knowing that if any shard had punctured his stomach, the acids and the contents of his last meal would swiftly give rise to peritonitis and certain, painful death in about fifteen minutes.

The needles pulsed a sickly pink-white and exploded, shredding the man's belly beyond recognition and spraying Rio with his blood and bits of meat. He had enough air for one more rattling sigh, and then lay still, now-lightless green eyes glazing over in death, pupils slowly widening. The stench of death, blood, feces, and cordite roiled around Rio, and she gagged, anger nearly choking her. The rattle of automatic weapons fire and the deep blasting of an M-45 shotgun filled her ears, but despite the shouts from the troopers, and the raw volume of fire from their weapons, there were still no Covenant visible.

Another trooper screamed in terror as a plasma grenade arced out of the darkness and adhered to his armor. He struggled frantically with the quick release on the plate, managed to get it free, and hurled it away into the dark, only to be spitted on twin ovals of plasma that erupted out of nothing. The explosion of the grenade threw out a sharp, brief shadow, and in a split second, Rio knew she was dead. Silhouetted in the afterimage of the explosion was the hulking shape of a Covenant Elite, plasma sword in hand.

A heavy thump sounded and a heavy weight fell across her legs. Involuntarily, she looked down, and was horrified to meet Marsh's dead gaze. Bisected at the waist, his intestines spilled across the dirt, his body weight crushed the air from his lungs in a hideous sigh. A heavy tread snapped her attention back to her front, and the hulking Elite that had materialized from nothing. Clad in flat black armor, plasma sword sizzling in its hand, the monster loomed over her. "Bind it, 'Tahmamee, and let us be on our way."

A heavy blow connected to the back of her skull, and Rio's world went dark.


	10. Chapter 10

_Covenant base camp_

_Maenali III, Maenali system_

_January 6, 2552, 0330 Hours, Standard Military Calendar_

Rio came to slowly, wincing at the pain that slid through her skull. Whatever had hit her had knocked her senseless even through her helmet; that was impressive all by itself, if somewhat agonizing to deal with. She kept herself still by dint of sheer willpower, and slowly slitted her eyes open, giving thanks that her glasses were still perched on her nose. All around her, the strange burnished purple structures of the Covenant rose from the ground like malignant fungus, marching in disorderly rows towards a hole bored into the native granite of Maenali's foothills. Grunts jabbered at each other, hauling a massive piece of machinery towards the hole, and she saw three Elites, one in green armor and two in orange, supervising the diminutive simians. _What the hell?_ She wondered. Why had the Covenant bothered capturing her? The savage bastards weren't known for talking to Humans anymore than necessary to kill them.

A subsonic trembling transmitted through the ground and reached Rio. A looming shape materialized, just visible in the corner of her vision; Rio recognized the massive Elite who had used the plasma sword on that poor boy in the forest. "Ah, Human, you are awake finally. Rise, and come with me."

Rio cocked an eyebrow and glared at the alien. "Drop dead, split-lip."

The pain of the Elite's kick exploded in Rio's gut like a bomb. "Don't be foolish, Human. I will have your cooperation, willing or not."

Wheezing, Rio rolled onto her back. "Hale, Rio. UNSC Navy, Service Number 78952-88376-RH." She let her eyes drift towards that beautiful sky once more, absently noting that there must be some debris hitting the atmosphere; shooting stars were streaking along, low to the horizon, seemingly close enough to touch; distant rumbles, like thunder, almost, rolled softly across the camp, nearly drowned by the sounds of the camp. The Elite reached down and hauled Rio to her feet. "Perhaps you hold out hope for rescue, Human. Let me show you what waits for you if you continue to refuse."

The Elite dragged her across the camp, to the outer edge. A stake had been driven into the ground, and Hale recognized the Army trooper tied to it; it was the same trooper who had given her the suppressed M7. He looked up at Rio, his face a bloody mask, and spat at the Elite. With his helmet gone, it was obvious to Rio that the trooper had been grazed by a plasma shot, and then pummeled by something hard; probably what Rio's skull would have looked like if her helmet had been missing when she was captured.

The Elite opened its mandibles in a grotesque approximation of a smile, and drew its plasma sword. Hunching down over the trooper, the Elite began to cut away the infantryman's clothing. He held his ground in the face of the Elite, but when the alien dug the twin points of the plasma into his ribs, scoring an intricate, horrific pattern into the flesh there, the Army trooper couldn't hold back anymore. His scream echoed, Rio's blood _pounded_ in her mind-

And suddenly from the trees, an explosion of assault weapon fire carved out and smashed into the Elite commando. He roared in surprise and anger, driven back onto his heels by the unexpected barrage. Rio seized her moment, rocking up like lightning to seize the small blue metal orb hanging from the Elite's belt and mashing the activation stud. Without a second's hesitation, Rio slapped it to the Elite's back, and rolled in front of him, throwing her body over the whimpering trooper.

With a fierce blast, the plasma grenade went off, carving the Elite into two steaming pieces. Black forms raced out from the trees, engaging targets that Rio couldn't see. Another Elite suddenly appeared with a shrill scream, trying to catch its entrails in its hands. It managed to get the bluish coils in its hands before it pitched over dead. The trooper, tears of pain and rage streaming from his eyes, squirmed out from under Rio and scrambled over to the eviscerated Elite, claiming its plasma rifle for his own and blasting away at the file of Jackals that responded to the unexpected assault.

Rio scrambled after him, her hand closing almost by accident on the plasma sword's hilt. She focused on watching through the streams of UNSC tracers and the harsh blobs of plasma for the tell-tale shimmer of cloaking technology, and when one appeared, practically on top of them, Rio lunged out and rammed the plasma deep into the alien's guts. The Elite, its spine severed, shuddered and died.

Weapons fire cracked and rattled around her, and Rio became dimly aware of the fact that the rattle was coming from _two_ sides- the trees behind her and ninety degrees to her right. Almost as if that recognition had been a summons, black armored figures emerged from the darkness, their rifles and submachine guns spitting death at the enemy. Grunts ran back from them, squealing, and Rio's trained ears managed to pick out the word _imps_, tainted with such raw terror she almost felt sorry for the murderous little bastards.

Rio herself took a careful look at the combatants, and a sudden surge of hope and savage glee surged through her- with that thick black armor, and those fully sealed, visored helmets, they could be none other than ODSTs- Humanity's finest Marines. One dropped out of the skirmish line that was driving the aliens away from the camp and knelt next to Rio and the trooper. His visor de-polarized, and Rio felt a sharp spike of… _something_ surge through her. The man's face, smooth and unlined, with vibrant honey-colored eyes, looked back at her. "Staff Sergeant Gray, 105th Shock Battalion, third company. Are you injured?"

The trooper regained his wits first. "Trooper Andre McCallister, Third Battalion, Seventh Regiment, Second Infantry. I'm cut up, and I can't see straight. This is Doc Hale, 8924th mobile hospital."

The Marine nodded and turned his eyes to Hale. "Can you take care of him, Doc?"

"Yes," she replied, her brain finally re-engaging. "Leave me your aid kit, and for God's sake, don't get shot." She bit her lip; where had _that_ come from?

Gray's eyes lightened a bit. "One does one's best, doctor." Like a wraith, the Marine rose from the ground and disappeared, his assault rifle hunting for the enemy.

Shaking her head, Rio turned her attention back to the wounded infantryman, breaking open the Navy-issue aid kit. He had several third-degree burns on his side, his head, and his left thigh, in addition to a severe concussion, possible subdural hematoma, and perhaps a skull fracture. She had just started to get a syrette of poly-morphine into McCallister when a shrieking thunderclap shattered the night, and a purple Covenant corvette shot overhead, spewing plasma fire. Rio threw herself over her patient, automatic instinct taking over, and turned terrified eyes to the enemy machine-

Precisely in time to see a lance of hot metal pierce the ship and break its spine, sending it tumbling to the ground. She estimated, in the quiet little part of her brain that was never fazed, from the shockwave and size of the ship relative to local landmarks that the corvette grounded perhaps ten kilometers distant. Looking up higher, she could just make out the angular shape of a UNSC frigate descending into the atmosphere, and without meaning to, she laughed. _This,_ she thought,_ is the beginning of the end. We've done it- we've destroyed the Covenant on Maenali, and the task force is here to keep the bastards gone!_

The crunch of heavy boots on soft grass brought her eyes down. Standing easily, helmet tucked under his arm, Gray ran a hand through his tightly shorn brown hair and issued a lopsided smile. "Well, Doctor, soon as your patient's well enough to be moved, what say we head on back to your place for a nightcap?"


End file.
